As they walked home after class, 21-year-old Elizabeth Evans and her roommate stopped and took a break at a fountain across the street from the CTA’s Blue Line Division station Wednesday night in the Wicker Park neighborhood.
Suddenly, they heard a deafening blast and felt shards of glass and small rocks pelting them as chunks of concrete plunged off a building across the street.
Stunned, Evans saw something moving in the rubble.
“Oh, it’s probably just a bag,” Evans remembers thinking, or part of the stone facade, which was blue in color.
“No, … it’s definitely a person!” said Evans, when they realized it was the jean jacket of a 22-year-old woman who was on the ground, her head bleeding.
Evans, a former lifeguard, sprinted across the street and was about a yard away as she saw another young woman crouching next to her, clasping her hand.
Evans called 911.
According to a Chicago police report, the victim and her companion had just come from the Division Street Blue Line station about 6 p.m. and were walking home when a section of the stone facade fell from a commercial building, which was apparently being rehabbed, and hit her head in the 1200 block of North Milwaukee Avenue.
“The facade of 1227 N. Milwaukee began to break apart in multiple pieces,” causing “numerous chunks and particles of concrete to spew onto the sidewalk and street below,” the report said. The victim was “caught in the storm of debris.”
The woman suffered “a laceration to the head,” and unknown internal injuries. She was rushed to Stroger Hospital in critical condition, according to police.
“Everyone just kind of stopped. … I was super nervous,” Evans said of the moment they heard the crash, which they thought was construction at first, but there was no machinery. A large yellow sign that read Value Pawn had fallen and hit the scaffolding, Evans said.
“As it fell, all this debris was flying at us,” Evans said.
The yellow sign still hung precariously from a chain about 2 feet from the ground.
As Evans worried about more scaffolding falling, she said she mainly was focusing on making sure the victim was OK.
Just before paramedics and firefighters got there, bystanders began to try to move her, prompting screams from Evans who said her lifeguarding training taught her that if a person suffers a head or back injury, the injured person should not be moved.
Firefighters and first responders cleared the pieces of stone and the sign away and brought her out on a backboard.
“She was breathing,” said Evans, who could see her abdomen moving up and down and her arm shaking.
She remained hospitalized Thursday afternoon, but a condition update was not available.
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Evans and her roommate stuck around because they wanted to apologize to the woman’s friend for yelling but were never able to because police arrived and she was busy speaking with them.
Police said a vehicle that had been traveling north on Milwaukee was damaged by debris, but the driver was not injured.
“It exploded his back window and flattened his tire,” Evans said.
The building owner told police he saw damage to the building and placed scaffolding up to do repairs, according to the police report.
A representative for the city’s Department of Buildings was not immediately available.
The accident was under investigation by Chicago police, which classified the event as an accidental injury and traffic crash.
“A lot of people were upset,” said Evans, adding she hoped the woman was doing better.
“It was a really horrible thing to happen. I’m really worried for her.”
baiduhai’s Shanzeh Ahmad contributed.
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