Man Attacked, Bitten At Lollapalooza Seeking Information On Attacker
By Lisa White in News on Aug 5, 2014 9:15PM
Photo credit: Jessica Mlinaric/Chicagoist
A Wicker Park man is searching for witnesses or information regarding the man who attacked and bit him Friday night during the Arctic Monkeys set at Lollapalooza. Ben Lenet, 29, was watching the band play on the north side of Grant Park around 9:45 p.m. with two of his friends when a man they did not know approached his friend, body slammed him and proceeded to use his hands to choke him.
Like most friends do, Lenet went to try and pull the man off his friend, and at that point the man bit down into Lenet's arm hard, not letting go. Lenet told RedEye Chicago:
"He turns around and clamps his teeth into my left forearm," he said, adding his two friends repeatedly struck the man to make him let go. "He's fully clamped, he's coming at me. He's ripping at me, he was trying to bite through my arm."
From Lenet's original post on Reddit, the man finally lets go and lunged at the feet of the original friend who was assaulted. The attacker was at that point kicked "pretty squarely in the face" and had taken "10-15 blows to the head." Lenet reported that at that point the man got up and simply walked away, "Not stumbling. Not woozy."
"It really only occurred to me later, the amount of beating he sustained was pretty massive. For him to be able to walk around is astounding," Lenet told RedEye. "The cops said later they usually don’t hear that unless the person is on PCP or bath salts," he added.
Lenet ran up to the nearest police officer and he was quickly taken to medical, who had him in an ambulance to a hospital within 10 minutes, where he was given a large round of shots, a cocktail of drugs and what he referred to as "the talk." Given the fact the person broke skin and drew blood, Lenet could be at risk of exposure to Hepatitis and HIV. He is now taking several drugs as a precaution, and although the initial blood work came back negative, he will need to go back for test in 30 and 120 days. Lenet told the Sun-Times “at the 30 day mark, if I got a negative, they’d be 95 percent sure. At the four-month mark, they’d be 100 percent.”
For now, Lenet is trying to find out if anyone witnessed the attack, has video or photo or would have any information regarding the attacker. "I only posted it so it might lead to something," he told the RedEye. "I am assuming a guy that does this doesn't do it in a bubble. I don’t want him to do this to anyone else."
To read more details of the attack (including some pretty rough looking photos of the bite that are a bit squeamish) head over to his original post on Reddit.
[H/T Jessica Galliart/RedEye Chicago]