Chicago police continue to hunt for the homeless suspect who fatally stabbed a 31-year-old woman since identified as a doctoral student studying criminal justice at the University of Maryland during a brazen daylight attack over the weekend that happened not far from the city’s financial district.
Investigators say grainy surveillance video captured the moment Anat Kimchi was attacked from behind around 4 p.m. Saturday in the 400 block of South Wacker Drive Saturday while walking along the sidewalk near Eisenhower Expressway. The unidentified suspect ran off and has not been apprehended.
“As you can see, there is a homeless encampment that is adjacent to where this crime scene is,” Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown told reporters. “We suspect this likely is a homeless person that secreted themselves in the bushes and came out and committed this heinous crime.”
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said at a press conference Monday that officers were “scouring the various homeless encampments downtown” for the suspect responsible for the stabbing – but denied that the attack proves the touristy area near Willis Tower is unsafe, the Chicago Sun Times reported.
“We know who he is. We’ve got good film of him,” she said. “We believe he’s a homeless individual.”
But Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan said at a later press conference that police still “are seeking the identity and the eventual arrest of the person who stabbed that female.” A witness told police the suspect – described as a man around age 30 with dreadlocks and wearing a red bandanna, a dark shirt and light-colored pants – came out of D’Angelo Park and stabbed the woman, the Chicago Tribune reported.