A wild video shows a female University of Chicago student fighting back against an armed robber and surprisingly pulling a magazine from her attacker’s firearm. Meanwhile, a man sitting a few meters away watches without offering any help.
The heroic 21-year-old fourth-year economics student, who goes only by her first name, Madeline, was one of three university students held at gunpoint within moments of each other on Wednesday.
“I saw a man wearing a ski mask coming towards me, so I tried to keep walking,” Madeline said. told NBC Chicago.
Madeline looked around and argued with the suspect for a while, as if pleading with passersby to intervene, until the boy, who was sitting on the ground a few meters away, took his place. What I saw was captured on surveillance camera footage.
The armed assailant “grabbed my phone and I was kind of pulling it behind my back,” she recalled.
“During the scuffle, I was able to remove the magazine from his gun and threw it into the bushes,” she added.
“But at that point I didn’t know what I was getting into.”
The robbers eventually made off with Madeline’s cell phone, but police later recovered both the device and the magazine Madeline had thrown.
Just five minutes before Madeline was robbed, two other students walking on the opposite side of the street encountered four armed suspects who robbed them and then fled in a black Infiniti. This was announced by the University of Chicago Police Department..
The first incident is being investigated by university police, while Madeline’s case is being handled by Chicago police. WGN News reported.
No one was injured in either incident, according to an alert from campus officials.
“Personally, I have always felt safe. It’s infuriating as a student to constantly receive alerts like this. These happen quite often, but to varying degrees. It’s really troubling to be so numb,” Madeline told WGN News.
“I never thought it would be me. When I was faced with that moment, I was in complete disbelief,” she added of her experience.
As of Friday morning, no arrests had been made in either case.
