Student beaten on Chicago train says bystanders did nothing to stop attack

CHICAGO -- A student was attacked on the CTA Blue Line in broad daylight - and she says other people on the train just watched as she was beaten.

Jessica Hughes was on her way home when she was attacked while sitting in a rail car near the Blue Line stop at Harrison and Kedzie.

"If you were seeing someone else getting abused, wouldn't you want to step in?" Hughes said.

Hughes said that perhaps more painful than the beating she took at the hands of two robbers while riding the "L", is that fellow passengers who saw the attack, did nothing to stop it.

"I was yelling for help. There were two other guys on the train and they did nothing. They just watched as he beat me," she said.

The DePaul student says she was brutally attacked Thursday around 10 a.m. as she rode a CTA Blue Line train home from campus.

The freshman nursing major said that after most of the passengers in her rail car got off at the UIC-Halsted stop, one man moved to the seat in front of her. As the train left the station, Hughes said she got a bad feeling. That's when the 19-year-old said the man tried to take her iPhone.

"He started pushing me and then he pushed me to the floor and when he pushed me to the floor, he started hitting on me constantly. His body was on top of me holding me down so I couldn't fight back," she said.

But Hughes didn't let go of her phone, even when her attacker bit her hand. She says the woman her attacker was with then punched her in the face before both fled to another rail car without the iPhone or anything else. Hughes said she finally got some help at the Kedzie/Homan stop.

A day later, the swollen and bruised teen says it will be tough to ride the train again as she struggles to understand why she was targeted.

"The fact that there was two people and that, why me," she said.

Hughes suffered a broken nose but is recovering at home.

Police said they are looking at surveillance video as they continue to search for the attackers. So far, no one is in custody.