Mechanics stop attack on woman near CTA Orange Line

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Police issued a community alert after they say a woman was attacked last week near a CTA Orange Line stop in the McKinley Park neighborhood.

On Tuesday night, Eyewitness News spoke with the heroes who stopped it and a woman possibly targeted by the same man. The attack happened in broad daylight in a parking lot as the female victim was walking to the 35th and Archer stop. Then just 24 hours later, another woman says it nearly happened again.

McKinley Park resident January Dieppa says she thinks she encountered the same man the next day. Dieppa says she remembers the man's eyes.

"Just a dead stare. He would not leave contact with my eyes, and I would not leave contact with his," said Dieppa. "If I did not have my dog with me, it would not have been a good outcome."

The encounter, she says, happened a day after another woman was attacked in the shadow of the Orange Line in a CTA parking lot off the 35th and Archer station.

"There's people walking back and forth in and out all day long, so I don't know how something like this would happen," said Joy Waldron, McKinley Park resident.

Police said the attack occurred last Thursday just before 9 a.m. A 22-year-old woman walking to the train when witnesses say a man approached her, lifted up her skirt, pushed her to the ground, and pulled off her underwear.

The commotion was overheard by Francisco Cruz and other mechanics working nearby.

"I pretty much believe that she was real scared from the way she was screaming and the way she was moving, shaking," Cruz said, through a translator. "I pursued the guy. I gave chase, but he was pretty much a block ahead of me."

Witnesses say the woman was shaken up but not seriously hurt.

The next morning around 9 a.m., Dieppa, who lives near the CTA parking lot, says she was walking her pit bull Diamond.

"And when I turned the corner, turned around, he was already across the street basically coming to approach me. He didn't see my dog. He didn't see what kind of dog I had," said Dieppa.

Dieppa says he matched the attacker's description, a black male in his 20s with his hair in corn rows. He left the scene when Diamond began growling.

"He's very bold, and I think his mentality is more of a, he's going to do it again, he's going to do what he wants, and catch me if you can," said Dieppa.

Dieppa says she did call police but has not yet been contacted by an investigator to give a statement.