Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly said he was randomly attacked one night last week by two men who punched and kicked him outside a bar in his ward.
Reilly said he was waiting outside for friends to settle 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.”
Reilly said he grabbed the man to get him to stop throwing punches, when a second man started kicking him in the head. Within seconds, Reilly said a security guard from the bar rushed over and pulled the attackers off him.
Reilly said the two men ran to an idling car and sped away. They didn’t attempt to rob him, he said.
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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 call police. “I didn’t require medical attention. It was a split-second incident,” he said. “So I didn’t think it required that 911 call, because I didn’t need to get any help and these guys were gone.”
City code requires liquor license holders “to report promptly to the police department all illegal activity reported to or observed by the licensee on or within sight of the licensed premises.”
Mayor Lori Lightfoot had just learned about the attack against Reilly, Isaac Reichman, a spokesman for the mayor’s office, said in a statement released Monday evening. The mayor “is deeply concerned and has directed the Chicago Police Department and the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection to conduct a full investigation of this incident, including the delay in reporting,” Reichman said.
Representatives from Boss Bar did not reply to a phone message or an email seeking comment.
Parts of downtown have seen high-profile looting incidents in the past year, and some residents of Chicago’s fanciest ZIP codes have said they’re worried by the rising violence in neighborhoods that have long been among the city’s safest.
Asked what it should mean to constituents that the alderman was attacked in this manner, Reilly, 42nd, said 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,” Reilly said. “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. And they were responding to other calls in other areas when this happened to me. But it happened so quickly that there’s no way they could have prevented this from happening, I don’t think.”
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