(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Community activists are asking the public for help in finding the person responsible for kidnapping and sexually abusing a girl on her way home from school on the South Side last Thursday.
Cecilia Butler, president of the Washington Park Residents Advisory Council, was among those who say people in the community should help find the 11-year old girl’s attacker.
Police say the girl was pulled into a secluded part of an alley on 62nd and Indiana as she was on her way home from Dulles Elementary School.
“We need all organizations, all groups, everybody to come out and help us find this culprit because we don’t want anything else to happen to anybody else in this neighborhood because enough happens already,” Butler said Monday.
“A thousand men should be looking for him to make sure that he gets taken off the streets because he could have murdered that young girl,” activist Tio Hardiman of Violence Interrupters said.
Police have put out a sketch of the man they’re looking for.
Activist Bamani Obadele says there’s a total of $4,000 in reward money being offered, so far, to identify the suspect.
“We cannot tolerate this nonsense, this level of violations to take place in our community. Black girls’ lives matter. They are young women. They have a right to grow up to be adults and be protected and productive,” Obadele said.
Another activist, Andre Smith, who is a candidate for alderman, also questions whether “Safe Passage” workers for the Chicago Public Schools were where they should have been last week.
The community representatives also say there should be counseling available for the girl and Dulles students. A CPS spokeswoman says that’s standard procedure when incidents happen involving particular schools.
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