Quinn Naughton was getting ready for bed when he heard a woman shouting outside his Lake View apartment building early Sunday.
“Help me, help me, help me!” she yelled, Naughton, 59, told the Sun-Times. He peered down from his fifth-floor window and spotted men getting violent with two women near a wrought-iron fence around his building in the 400 block of West Wellington Street.
“They were holding the two women against that fence. They were still screaming. One of the guys started hitting one of the women, and I immediately ran to get my phone and called 911. I got to the other side of the room, and that’s when I heard the shot,” Naughton said.
From his window, Naughton saw the injured woman lying face up on a sidewalk, her friend at her side, applying pressure to her wound before paramedics got there.
“She kept screaming, and then I got through to 911, and they said, ‘Yes, we’ve had a number of calls.’”
The two women, both 24, had been walking home to one of their homes around 12:25 a.m. when three gunmen leaped from a silver SUV, according to a police report obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
When they demanded the womens’ belongings the woman who was shot started to fight back, but her friend stopped her, saying “let them have” their things, the report said.
The woman who resisted began shouting and trying to run away when one of the robbers punched and shot her, the report said.
Witnesses, including Naughton, heard the “loud bang,” and the woman collapsed, the report said.
The robbers stole two black backpacks and an iPhone and sped away east in the SUV. One of the witnesses, a man in a vehicle, snapped a picture of the license plate and gave it to police.
Naughton rushed downstairs.
“I immediately came down here, thinking, ‘Can I do something?’ Which is stupid, but just to see. And then at that point the police were pulling up, other people had arrived, and that was it,” he said.
A fire truck pulled up after the police arrived, and emergency responders began attending to the injured woman for about 15 minutes until an ambulance arrived, Naugton said. The woman was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center where she had surgery and was in good condition, according to police.
Naughton said he believes crime has been on the rise in the area, citing an uptick in armed robberies he’s noticed on the Citizen app.
“The app had three nights in a row, three armed robberies on the 400 block of West Wellington, and I thought, this is strange, after the two nights, the police should just have a sting or something for a few nights, and then that was the night,” Naughton said.
Naughton said he’s lived in his building for just over a year, but he’s been in the neighborhood for a long time. And he doesn’t feel as safe going out at night as he once did.
“After dark, I stay home. Twenty years ago that was not the case,” he said. “It could get maybe a little sketchy at night on the L, but other than that, especially in this neighborhood, I wouldn’t think twice about going out. Now I won’t go anywhere after dark. It’s maybe an overreaction.”
Naughton said he has not been contacted by police and has not heard any safety updates from the building’s property management.
No arrests have been made.