Eleven suburban teens were charged with multiple felonies after a series of incidents in which men were lured to a location using a dating app and beaten over the summer, police said announced Thursday.
According to the Mount Prospect Police Department, two separate incidents occurred on July 8, with two men reporting they were beaten by a group of teenagers in the northwest Chicago suburb.
The first incident happened sometime during the evening hours in the parking lot of a business at 606 West Northwest Highway.
At around 9:45 p.m., a 41-year-old man walked into the Mount Prospect Police Department and reported he had been "battered earlier in the evening by a group of teenagers." The man told officers he had arranged to meet someone at the location using a dating app, but when he arrived, he was approached by the group "who confronted him verbally and battered him."
Teens in the group also damaged the man's vehicle before he managed to flee in it, with the group following him in their own vehicles.
He eventually managed to get away before reporting the incident to police, authorities said.
Minutes after the first man arrived at the police station, officers were called to the 400 block of See Gwun Avenue for a report of a battery.
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There, a 23-year-old man told police he was beaten by a group of teenage males, who also damaged his vehicle. The man told officers he had arranged to meet someone in the 900 block of West Lincoln Street using a dating app, but when he arrived, the group was waiting for him.
During the attack, one of the teens slashed his tires, police said.
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The man managed to get back in his vehicle and drive away before realizing his tires had been slashed.
He then approached a nearby home and asked them to call 911. He was transported from the home to an area hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
Police said an extensive investigation was launched and, using video surveillance footage of the first attack, they were able to identify some of the individuals involved.
During their investigation a total of 11 juveniles were identified as taking part in either one or both incidents. In one case, one of the teens shouted racial and derogatory terms, leading to hate crime charges.
The teens each turned themselves in to police in November and were taken to the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center in Chicago.
Police said, when questioned, some of the teens said they got the idea for the attacks from a social media trend they saw online.
The incidents mirror similar ones recently reported in Australia and another allegedly involving Salisbury University students this fall.
“We are asking parents to take these incidents as an opportunity to talk with their teenage children about the seriousness of actively participating in these types of trends they see on social media,” Police Chief Michael Eterno said in a statement.
As part of the case, 10 17-year-olds and one 16-year-old from Mount Prospect and Arlington Heights were each charged with felony aggravated battery, criminal damage to property and mob action.
Some face charges of aggravated battery with great bodily harm and one faces two felony counts of a hate crime.
