Robbers locked cashier in store room while making off with $3,550 from Bleeding Heart Bakery's Oak Park location Monday night. more ›

A year ago, Natasha McShane was savagely beaten with a baseball bat during a Bucktown mugging. She seemed well on her way to recovery when her parents brought her home to Northern Ireland for more medical attention. But McShane's father, Liam, tells the Sun-Times that his daughter has had to deal with a series of setbacks since and her recovery has actually regressed. more ›

Robinson Taylor, 21, a student at Columbia College Chicago, took the role of the inside man in a recent home invasion, letting armed robbers into an Old Town apartment, where they beat his friends with brass knuckles and a handgun, according to Cook County prosecutors via the Chicago Tribune. Taylor was spotted on the security video on early Friday morning, opening the outer door to let the men inside. After beating the victims, the men stole computer and stereo equipment, before fleeing. Taylor allegedly climbed out a third-story window after the victims confronted. Police arrested him at 3:30 a.m. on Friday. He was held on Saturday in lieu of $450,000 bail on three felony counts of home invasion with a gun. more ›

Here is the sketch of the suspect in the Monday murder of Sally Katona-King, who died from injuries sustained when the suspect pushed her down a flight of stairs trying to flee the Fullerton Red/Brown Line "L" station after robbing another person of their iPhone. more ›

We listed this in yesterday's "Extra Extra" but this needs its own post. Police are looking at surveillance tape and asking CTA riders who were at the Fullerton Red/Brown line station Monday to come forward if they have information into the death of Sally Katona-King. Katona-King died from injuries sustained after a robber pushed her down a flight of stairs so he could flee the station after robbing another CTA passenger of her iPhone. more ›

Chicago Police released a sketch of a man on Friday that they believe was involved in an attempted sexual assault, robbery, and vehicle hijacking in Logan Square earlier this week. The incident took place on March 7 around 8:22 p.m. when a 34-year-old woman was returning to her home on the 2500 block of North Avers Avenue, police said to the Chicago Tribune. The woman had pulled her 1994 Green Mercury minivan into the alley behind her home and was parking in her garage when she was attacked by a man who police said was waiting inside the garage. The man forced himself into the woman's minivan at knifepoint and demanded money and other valuables from the woman. more ›

As the snow begins to melt, it's back to business as usual in Chicago. Early this morning a man was shot and robbed of a snowblower in the Englewood neighborhood, marking the first shooting since the blizzard hit on Tuesday, police said via the Chicago Tribune. There had been no shootings in the city since 3 p.m. on Tuesday when the snow first hit, according to preliminary data. more ›

Meet Mostafa Mohammad who on Tuesday thwarted an attempted robbery in the phone store he owns at 64th & King St. when he wrestled the would-be robber and managed to get the gun away from him. According to the Trib's report of the incident, the gun went off just as Mohammad reached for the gun, striking another employee in the arm (the injury was not life-threatening). Check out full surveillance footage here and the WGN 9 story on the incident below. more ›

Two female suspects used semi-automatic weapons in a robbery of three Irish women in Wicker Park yesterday morning around 5:30 a.m. The incident occurred in the 1600 block of N. Wood, not too far from the location of the April incident in which two women, one Irish, were beaten by a baseball bat-wielding suspect. No one is in custody at this time for Friday's incident. more ›

A man and a woman are in police custody in connection with last week's baseball bat beating of a pair of women in Bucktown more ›

Chicago Police are looking for a man who posed as a City Inspector and robbed a Subway restaurant in the Loop before fleeing the store...and leaving the money behind. The incident happened over the weekend at the Subway in the 100 block of North Wells Street. According to CBS 2: more ›

Red Line rush hour commuters hit a wrinkle in their trip home yesterday when a robbery suspect's exploding bag of money temporarily shut down Red Line service. The suspect tried using the Red Line as his get away after making off with a bag of money but a dye pack in the bag exploded, ruining the money and causing a foul odor to waft through the station. The alleged robber was trying to make his get-away via the Chicago Red Line stop but Chicago Police officers were able to descend on the suspect quickly - he was the one with dye all over him - and made the arrest. But that wasn't the only reason the Red Line was snarled yesterday evening. It seems a small fire broke out on the tracks just a stop away at Grand. There's no word on what caused the fire but a CTA employee managed to put it out. more ›

Here's a story to warm the heart of even the biggest Scrooge in Chicago, especially in the wake of the violence that happened over this holiday weekend. A Chicago police officer took on the role of Santa for a South Side family dealing with two back-to-back, Christmas tragedies: a fire and a burglary. more ›

The FBI and local area police are investigating two separate Friday night bank robberies, one in west suburban Oak Brook and the other in north suburban Skokie. more ›

A man suspected of stealing items out of a Jeep Cherokee -- with the help of a self-written how to guide -- was ordered to be held on a $125,000 bail Saturday. more ›

Phillip Menefee, 48, Portage, was arrested early Friday morning for allegedly stealing a Christmas tree while riding his bike home from a bar. Police were apparently looking for the source of a motor noise near the tree lot at U.S. 6 and Willowcreek Road, when they discovered Menefee balancing a fir tree on the handlebars of his bicycle. His bike had a homemade motor and no lights. more ›

Two people stole over $70,000 in cash from an ATM in the bank lobby of a Chase Bank in Buffalo Grove earlier this month, police said. The two thieves obtained customers' account information from a camera and another recording device they installed in the lobby. The Secret Service was informed of the robbery, which took place at the Chase Bank on the 170 block of North McHenry Road in Buffalo Grove. more ›

A man faces one count of felony robbery for allegedly pushing and robbing his 80-year-old wheelchair-bound mother, according to CB2. The mother found her son, Randy Suggs, 54, in her bedroom early Friday morning with a blanket over his head to cover his face, the report states. When asked why he was "doing this," Suggs pushed the woman to the ground, stole $67 and fled. Suggs' mother waited for her other son to come home, who called the police and followed them to arrest Suggs. more ›

Three men were arrested earlier this week for a rash of Craigslist-aided robberies that began in October, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. more ›

Shane T. Collymore, 18, Skokie, was charged with three felony counts of armed robbery, three felony counts of aggravated unlawful restraint, and three felony counts of aggravated kidnapping in connection with robbery of MB Financial Bank, 1014 Busse Hwy. in Park Ridge, on Aug. 13, 2008. Police said that in the robbery, a man wearing a black-and-pink dress, white gloves, sandals, and a woman's sun hat walked into the bank at closing time and pulled out a black handgun from the purse he was carrying. more ›

At about 9:15 p.m. on Saturday night, Dequarius Cannon, 17, and another individual were sitting in a car at the intersection of 105th and Peoria streets on the Far South Side in the Washington Heights neighborhood when someone approached their vehicle and demanded valuables from them, according to police News Affairs Officers Laura Kubiak. Cannon, who was in the driver's seat, got shot in his left temple, Kubiak said. more ›

Police are investigating a rash of hair salon robberies after another south suburban salon was robbed Thursday evening, ABC 7 reports. Fifteen salons have been robbed over the last five weeks in Homewood and Flossmoor, Ill., according to the report. Police say they believe the same person is behind the robbery: a brick was used to break in and only money was taken in all 15 burglaries. [ABC 7] more ›

Narcotics police arrested two men suspected of shooting a man in his 30s during a robbery Friday afternoon on the South Side. more ›

• CPS officials are boasting about higher test scores, but are they misleading?
• Police caught a man accused of a rape in Logan Square.
• An Amtrak train bound for Chicago crashed into a sedan today, killing all five people in the car.

• Major airlines are set to do the hokey pokey at O'Hare on June 1 and United will be sharing space at Terminal 1 with Continental.
• Michael Norton, owner of Norton Sweet Shop - a West Side convenience store - was shot and killed in an attempted robbery last night.
• More change coming to Chicago's parking meters: by the end of the year, 3,000 cash-free payment boxes - on which you can use credit cards - will be installed.

Yesterday, it appeared as if the robber known as "The Daybreak Bandit" had struck again, this time hitting a Harris Bank in Joliet at around 7 a.m. The man hid behind a dumpster and when an employee arrived to open the bank, he told the employee he was armed and forced them to open the bank. Today, local FBI officials confirmed that a suspect in the robbery was in custody along with an accomplice, though no charges have been filed. "The Daybreak Bandit" earned his nickname because he chose to rob banks in the early morning when workers were just arriving. The bandit's suspected of other robberies in Plainfield, Romeoville and Hinsdale and a $20,000 reward had been offered for his capture. [Daily Herald, Fox Chicago] more ›

A Lake County grand jury has ruled the shooting of an alleged robber by a grocery store clerk was justified and the clerk will not face any charges. The incident occurred on October 13 when the alleged robber, Brandon Starks, held up People's Market, using a gun. Once Starks fled on a bicycle, according to police, the clerk - who remains unnamed by authorities - followed Starks outside and shot him twice in the torso. Starks, who was on parole for a previous burglary conviciton, was pronounced dead shortly after the shooting. more ›

This morning's robbery of the Metropolitan Bank branch at 1947 W. 35th St. in McKinley Park was Chicago's 270th robbery this year. While it's still short of the record - 284 in 2006 - it's still a sharp increase over last year's 226. This robber wore pink gloves during the incident. The robber "was described as Hispanic, about 5-foot-7, 200 pounds and wearing a light green hoodie under a black puffy jacket, blue jeans and white gym shoes." No one was hurt in the incident. more ›

Photo by krmmnn