CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Chicago Alderman Brendan Reilly said he was roughed up one night last week by two men while he stood outside a downtown bar in his ward.
Ald. Reilly told the Chicago Tribune he was waiting outside for friends to pay their tab at Boss Bar in River North around 10:30 p.m. Thursday when a man approached him.
“Out of nowhere this guy ran up on me. He was yelling at me,” Reilly said. “I didn’t understand what he was saying. His pupils were dilated. He was enraged, and before I know it, he’s on top of me, punching me in the face.”
Then, he said, another man approached and started kicking him.
Reilly said a security guard from the bar noticed what was happening, rushed over and pulled the attackers off of him.
The two men fled in an idling car.
Reilly told the Tribune the men did not try to rob him, so he did not call police.
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”I had never seen these people before in my life,” he said. “They had not been in the establishment. I had no prior contact with these folks. I don’t know if it was mistaken identity or something. It was completely random. And I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the whole thing.”
The alderman said he didn’t require medical attention.
Asked what it should mean to constituents that the 42nd Ward alderman was attacked in this manner, Reilly told the Tribune that anyone downtown “needs to be vigilant when they’re out in public in the evening.
“It’s no secret that there’s been a rash of crime and violence downtown. There are big numbers of people who come down to this part of the city on Thursday through Saturday nights. People are inebriated and there’s a lot of drug use going on down here, and it can get chaotic at times. I would like to see a stepped-up security presence in our hospitality corridors to prevent these types of things from happening. But they do a very good job, and they are stretched thin."