In a video that has since gone viral, a couple walking in downtown Chicago was brutally assaulted by a large group of people Saturday night in the Loop, and they’re sharing the story of how a Good Samaritan may have saved their lives.
The couple, Ashley Knutson and Devontae Garrisson-Johnson, say they had just left Nordstrom and were walking through the Loop looking for a place to eat when they were caught up in a large group of teens and young adults Saturday.
Knutson, visiting the area from South Carolina, and Garrison-Johnsson, of Maywood, tried to make their way through the crowd, but they were quickly overwhelmed.
“We were trying to walk through the crowd, and I was holding his hand and he was walking in front me,” Knutson said. “First they shoved him, and then they ended up shoving me too.”
A now-viral video, originally posted by CWB Chicago, shows a large group of people viciously attacking the couple, punching and kicking both of them while stomping on Garrison-Johnsson’s head.
“I said ‘DJ! I just got pushed,’ and he turned around and said ‘don’t put your hands on her,’” Knutson said. “And as soon as he said that, everything went crazy.”
The video’s audio reveals Knutson yelling for help as the attack took place, and that’s when an unlikely hero emerged.
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“I felt like at that moment I needed to take action,” Lenora Dennis said.
Dennis jumped in to help and was able to deescalate the attack.
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“By the time he got up, he was bleeding from the mouth, his head, his eyes,” she said. “He couldn’t make straight eye contact. It felt like he might have been concussed.”
Garrisson-Johnson suffered most of the injuries. His eyes are still filled with blood, and other injuries will still require medical attention.
Dennis says what frustrates her the most was that she didn’t receive any help from Chicago police.
“I literally went in front of a police car that I saw coming, like literally stood in front of their car, and I was like ‘stop! There’s people over here getting assaulted,’ and he looked, there were four police officers in the car. The driver looked, and he just cut a path and drove around me,” she said.
“They didn’t stop. Who knows what would have happened if it wasn’t for her,” Garrisson-Johnson added.
The couple was able to find refuge in a nearby department store, and then were driven to a police station.
The group stole the couple’s shoes and phones, along with their credit cards.
It is unclear whether any arrests have been made in the case, and police say at least 15 people were arrested on a variety of charges stemming from the downtown disturbances.
