Man hit in head with wine bottle in Red Line robbery, police looking for suspects

Police are looking for a man and woman that robbed a man and hit his head with a wine bottle on a CTA Red Line train Sunday.

The Chicago Police Department released images of the attackers Sunday afternoon. Officers are investigating the attack, but need the man who was robbed and struck by the bottle to cooperate, Chicago police Deputy Chief Rahman Muhammad said at a Monday morning news conference.

“We’re working to try to attempt to work with this victim,” he said.

Bystanders captured Sunday’s predawn attack in a video that has since garnered over a million social media views. The video shows a man and woman talking to a seated passenger. The man asks for the passenger’s identification as the woman reaches for his jacket pocket.

“Stop playing. We’re not playing with you,” the man says to the passenger.

The woman takes a half-empty wine bottle from the passenger as the man grabs what appears to be the passenger’s money and identification. Another bystander tries to break the three apart before the woman raises the green-tinted glass bottle and strikes the seated passenger on his forehead.

“Oh my god!” shouts the man recording the video, who did not respond to messages sent by the Tribune.

The passenger hit by the wine bottle hunches over in his seat. Blood drips from his forehead onto the speckled train car floor.

CPD First Deputy Superintendent Eric Carter said Monday that public transit violence has sharply dropped since the same period last year,

“Violent crimes on the CTA are down 38% month-to-date compared to September 2021,” he said.

The transit authority and police have recently worked to fortify security at CTA stations, trains and buses. A string of violence marked by an early August Red Line shooting that killed a 29-year-old man prompted CPD leaders to assign more police officers, including police dogs, to the transit system. Days later, a woman stabbed a 37-year-old man riding another Red Line train.

In late August, the CTA announced that it had signed a $30.9 million contract for Action K-9 Security to provide unarmed guards and dogs to patrol train stations. Agency leaders had already shared plans to increase security to combat a transit crime spike in March.

[ CTA bringing back security dogs, three years after removing them from train platforms ]

Carter defended the department’s policing of bus and rail lines.

“I think we’re doing a very good job. We’ve increased our manpower with the CTA,” he said.

Ridership across the transit authority’s trains and buses has recently reached its highest levels since the start of the pandemic, the CTA wrote in a Monday news release.

“Each of the last four weeks has brought a new, pandemic-era ridership high — bringing the weekday ridership average above 900,000 for the first time since February 2020,” the agency wrote.

The transit authority shared security camera footage with the police after the incident and will continue to help officers find the attackers, the agency said in a separate statement.

“This kind of behavior is absolutely reprehensible and should not happen to any CTA customer.”

jsheridan@chicagotribune.com

Twitter: @jakesheridan_