The incident was captured on cell phone video and shared with ABC7 by CWB Chicago. The video shows a huge crowd of young people beating up a young couple on Wabash between Michigan and Randolph.
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Ashley Knutson and her boyfriend DJ were searching for a place to eat when they happened upon a crowd along Wabash Avenue.
"I said, 'DJ, I just got pushed,'" she recalled. "He turned around and said, 'Don't you put your hands on her, don't you push her.' As soon as he said that, everything went crazy. They went crazy. Started jumping us, saying they were going to kill us."
Devante Garrison-Johnson isn't even visible in the video as he's already on the ground.
"They were kicking and punching me and I just had to get to defense. Can't do much when there's like 20 people on you," he said.
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Lenora Dennis had just come out of Macy's on Wabash just seconds before the attack began. She said she tried to stop several police officers, but when they didn't stop she intervened herself.
"Once I saw that there will be no external intervention, yeah, absolutely, I said I can't let him just get killed in front of my face. That's not the thing to do. So yeah, bad. I felt like it was that bad," Dennis said. "I'm just telling them, get out of that area. And as I was telling them that, the group came back around the corner and started fighting again. And so that's when I was like, this going to be an all-night ordeal if I don't get them out of there."
Dennis said she was finally able to get the young couple into her car and drove them herself to a police station to give a report. They had been stripped of their cell phones, credit cards and even the shoes off their feet. She even gave the couple some money to get by.
"All I can say is I was put there," Dennis said.
Two teenagers were shot in the chaos, and 15 were arrested. Dennis said she's lived in Chicago all her life and never witnessed anything like that. She said it was not a small crowd. As she put it, anyone who cares about Chicago needs to stop this and prevent it from happening again.