AN IRISH university student remains in a critical condition at a Chicago hospital after sustaining head injuries in a savage assault by a mugger wielding a baseball bat on Friday.
Natasha McShane (23), a postgraduate student from UCD who was studying at the University of Illinois in Chicago, was with a friend, Stacy Jurich (24), when they were attacked while on the way back to the friend’s house in the Bucktown area of the US city.
Sgt Walter Chudzik of the Chicago police department yesterday said the women were attacked from behind by a man with a baseball bat while walking home from a night out. He said both victims were knocked to the ground and had their bags stolen in the attack, which occurred at 3.30am.
“The area where it happened has a lot of bars and restaurants and people hanging around at that time of night. There are predators there that prey on people on a night out. There are robberies every few weeks,” he said.
Sgt Chudzik said the Chicago police department had assigned a lot of people to work on the investigation because of the savage nature of the attack.
Detectives told local media the robber hit both women on the head with an aluminium baseball bat. The thief battered Ms Jurich a second time when she got up to help Ms McShane, according to reports by WBBM radio station.
Both women were knocked unconscious and transferred to the intensive care unit of Advocate Illinois Masonic Hospital.
“That was just a sick crime. There was no reason for that type of violence at all,” said Chicago Police Supt Jody Weis.
Ms McShane’s parents, who live in Silverbridge, Armagh, flew to Chicago on Saturday to be by their daughter’s bedside.
The hospital said last night that Ms McShane remained in a critical condition in the intensive care unit. Ms Jurich, who works for a brokerage firm in Chicago, is now in a serious condition in hospital.
Ms Jurich regained consciousness on Saturday and was able to talk to her mother Wendy Gay Van Etten. Ms Van Etten told local media the robber struck her daughter in the back of the head, causing her to stumble to the ground. He then struck Ms McShane in the head two or three times before hitting Ms Jurich again as she got up.
Ms Jurich screamed for a taxi driver to stop his taxi, but the man saw the blood on her clothes and kept going. A second taxi driver then stopped and called 911. That’s when Jurich passed out.
“Natasha got the worst of it,” Ms Van Etten told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Ms McShane a student at UCD has been studying since January at the University of Illinois college of urban planning and public affairs. She had just secured an internship in the US.
She completed her primary degree at Queen’s University in Belfast and completed an MA in Urban and Regional Planning at UCD. In 2008 she was awarded a cross-Border scholarship, organised by Universities Ireland, to encourage students to carry out post-graduate studies at an institution on the other side of the Border from where they lived. The Department of Foreign Affairs said it was providing assistance to the family through its consulate in Chicago.