(CHICAGO) Chicago Police released additional photos Tuesday afternoon of the suspects who attempted to rob a couple downtown over the weekend, leading to the woman’s death as she tried to escape by running across Lake Shore Drive.
Pamela Johnson and her boyfriend were sitting near Lake Michigan discussing their future and enjoying the balmy weather early Sunday when a group of menacing young men approached them.
The couple had previously trekked from their South Side neighborhood to the picturesque downtown setting “a thousand times” to watch the runners, the cyclists and the boats.
It was the first time they felt afraid there.
The men left, then started to approach the couple again, quickly. Johnson, 32, and her boyfriend, 43, ran to North Lake Shore Drive near Huron Street and hurdled the concrete barrier to escape at about 1:40 a.m.
They safely crossed the northbound lane. But as they looked back, they saw the men at the same barrier — and at least one of them had a gun. Johnson was struck by a pickup truck as she darted into the southbound lane, and she was killed.
Meantime, a Chicago Police officer in a marked squad car happened to be nearby on Lake Shore Drive, saw the men near the concrete barrier and hit the emergency lights on his car. The men ran away.
That’s the account Johnson’s distraught boyfriend gave Monday afternoon outside his family’s home in the Calumet Heights neighborhood on the South Side.
The boyfriend, who asked that he not be named, credited the unidentified officer with possibly saving his life by driving back the would-be robbers.
“If it wasn’t for the police being there at the time, I don’t know where I might be now — six-feet under?” he said.
The boyfriend also urged anyone who knows the assailants, whose ages appeared to range from late teens to mid-20s, to turn them in to the police.
Anthony Guglielmi, chief spokesman for the Chicago Police, said detectives have discovered video supporting the boyfriend’s account. The video shows the couple was approached by a group of seven or eight men before the fatal accident, he said.
Detectives now want to question the men pictured in the photos. The newest photos released Tuesday are from the Red Line 95th Street station, according to police. Anyone who recognizes the suspects is asked to call Area Central detectives at (312) 747-8380.
Andrew Holmes, an activist who is related to Johnson through marriage, had suffered the loss of his own daughter in a murder last year in Indiana.
“Yeah, it hurts because it hit home again,” Holmes said.
“We got to quit putting a Band-Aid over crime and sugar-coating it. And the families [of criminals] need to stop protecting their family members.”
Johnson’s boyfriend was so upset that he could barely talk about her, but he managed to say, “She was my baby. Also she was a loving daughter, a loving sister and a damn good mother. We’re all going to miss her.”
The couple had just arrived at the lakefront before the criminals started stalking them.
“We was sitting down, enjoying the weather and talking over goals — and life.”
