Employee At FOUND Hotel In River North Accused Of Stabbing Man, Going Into Rage, Leaving Guests In Terror
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Video Thursday night showed a River North hotel worker getting aggressive and throwing luggage around – and moments later, a man was stabbed.
As CBS 2's Jermont Terry reported, a group traveled to Chicago for a getaway late Thursday and planned to stay at the FOUND Hotel Chicago, 613 N. Wells St., where they said they had reservations. But when they arrived, things got ugly and violent.
Hours later, suitcases sat on the sidewalk outside the hotel. The bags belonged to a distraught woman who was seen standing inside police tape, who sometime earlier had been told by an employee of the hotel to, "Get the f**k out."
The employee is accused of threatening the woman in the lobby with a knife, after he had already allegedly stabbed her fiancé as they tried checking in.
"The receptionist was just very aggressive," said a woman who was with the group. "I think we had thought we booked what we thought was a hostel. We booked what we thought was one room for all of us. He said it wasn't on his end, and it escalated from there."
The woman with the group said the employee and her friend exchanged words first.
"The next thing I know, they're swinging at each other entangled," she said.
The video does not show the fight, but it does show the employee – clad in a red shirt – waving a knife after witnesses said he lost the tussle.
CBS 2 was there when police escorted the same employee in the red shirt from his job - this time in handcuffs.
"He was screaming at them to the get the F out. He don't want to accommodate them," said another woman who was in the lobby, "and then he pulled out a knife from behind the from desk and stabbed the guy in the midst of them fighting."
The witness said the worker was enraged and showed no signs of dropping the knife.
Terry: "Once he stabs the person checking in, what else does he do?
Witness: "He just waving the knife like he wanted to stab everybody, and we all just ran."
Those in the lobby at the time included the man who was stabbed in his side. He stumbled onto the sidewalk on Wells Street near Ontario Street.
Meanwhile, as for the employee, the witness said: "He wouldn't stop screaming. He wouldn't stop yelling. He still was throwing things. So I ran upstairs to the second floor and locked myself in an empty room."
The worker did not run. In fact, he got back behind the front desk and only left the hotel when police arrested him.