Victim claims attack in Chicago park was racially motivated

CHICAGO (WLS) -- A woman who was stabbed multiple times in a Chicago park claims the attack was racially motivated. The woman said she and her brother had bricks and bottles thrown at them, and that racial slurs were being yelled as they were stabbed.

The attack left her back riddled with stab wounds and her face covered in stitches, but Kristina Fox's pain is more than physical.

"I'm still a wreck because I don't understand why this happened to me and my little brother," Fox said.

Fox, a 30-year-old administrative assistant, said she was attacked at Taylor-Lauridsen Park in Canaryville. Fox said she and her brother and one of their friends were hanging out in the playground in the early hours of Saturday morning when they struck up a conversation about music with a man and two women nearby, who were soon joined by their friends. Fox said two of the men in the other group then had a disagreement.

"They were arguing, so my little brother was trying to break it up. He's like, 'We're out here trying to have a nice time. You're all friends. Don't fight,'" Fox said. "And they just start jumping on him."

Fox said as she and her brother tried to leave, they were suddenly surrounded by people arriving at the scene.

"It was like 16 people on my brother, so I went over there to try to get them off. Everything happened so quickly. The next thing I know we're laying on the ground," Fox said. "It's like this part of my skin is hanging down here. And I feel over some more, and the knife was still stuck in my face."

Fox was stabbed at least eight times and the bones around her eye were broken. Her brother, who was also stabbed, suffered a punctured lung.

The attackers were all white, Fox said, and to her their motive was clear.

"If somebody pretty much kept calling you the N-word, you would think it was racially motivated, too," Fox said.

Fox says the vision in her right eye remains blurry, but she is expected to recover from her wounds.

Police said Area Central detectives are investigating and no one is in custody.