- Credibility:
CHICAGO — Four people stole a man’s car and beat him with a hammer early Thursday in Humboldt Park, police said.
At 3:18 a.m., a 51-year-old man was unloading his car in the alley behind the 2600 block of West Haddon Avenue when two women and two men pulled up in a Chevy Sedan, police said.
One woman got out and started hitting the man’s head with a hammer while the other woman and the men beat the victim.
The attackers got into the man’s car, a 2012 gray Lexus SUV, and drove away, police said.
The man had bruises in his head and cuts on his nose. He was taken to St. Mary Hospital, where his condition was not available but he was listed as “stable,” police said.
No one was in custody. An investigation was ongoing.
Longtime resident of the block Daniel Vega, 56, said crimes like carjackings are more common in Humboldt Park now that the neighborhood is gentrifying.
“There’s a lot of people buying condos and they go into their garage and they don’t go outside and they don’t socialize. It’s like New York. You don’t know your neighbors,” said Vega, who has owned a home on the block since 1987.
That opinion was shared by lifelong Humboldt Park resident Jose Ortiz, 48, whose mother-in-law lives near where the carjacking occurred.
Ortiz added that police need to be doing more to keep the neighborhood safe.
“In Humboldt Park, you just gotta watch your back. You turn your back for one second, you get killed. … Police ain’t doing nothing about it. They need more police out here,” he said.
“I’m used to living here, and I’m used to all of this violence everywhere. It really doesn’t bother me. But to do it to an old man is no good. … It’s crazy out here.”
