CTA Blue Line disrupted on Chicago's West Side after hammer attack
CHICAGO (CBS) -- CTA Blue Line trains along the Eisenhower Expressway were disrupted Tuesday afternoon and evening, after someone was hit in the head with a hammer on a train station platform.
Police said at 3:49 p.m., a 31-year-old man was on the platform for the Western Avenue Blue Line stop in the Forest Park branch—which runs through the West Side and Oak Park in the median of the Eisenhower Expressway. A woman came up and grabbed his phone away, police said.
The man tried to get his phone back, so the woman started beating him in the head with a hammer, police said. The woman hit the man multiple times, and he was taken to Stroger Hospital of Cook County with lacerations to the head, police said.
Following the attack, trains in both directions were bypassing the Western station on the Forest Park branch, according to the Chicago Transit Authority.
The shutdown thwarted the original plan for two men headed to the Democratic National Convention. The men, Robert Allen and Dan Nelson, were on their way to the United Center early Tuesday evening—hoping to see former President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama speak.
They had planned to take the Forest Park branch Blue Line from Western to the Illinois Medical District stop, and then walk a few blocks to the United Center. But with the Western stop out of commission, the men decided they would have to walk all the way to the United Center—which is nearly a mile away from the Western stop.
Allen said he walked up to the Western stop and saw a crime scene set up.
"I kind of read that and then the cop goes: 'You have to get out of here. It's a crime scene,'" he said.
Nelson said he hoped the incident would not exacerbate negative perceptions of Chicago in the middle of the DNC.
"It's just too bad, because Chicago doesn't have the crime that everyone thinks it does," said Nelson, "and to have this happen right now, I just hope that's not the story—because the story is it's a beautiful city, and it's a wonderful place to leave, and the mass transit has been the best I've ever seen it."
Some people decided to take public transportation to the DNC Tuesday night to avoid the traffic nightmare that ensued the night before—after agitators breached a security fence during protests near the United Center.
No one was in custody in the attack Tuesday evening. Harrison Area detectives are investigating.
It was not clear when the station where the attack happened would be reopening.
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