Chicago outraged by attack

AT Butch McGuire’s bar in downtown Chicago early on Thursday afternoon a man walks in and asks for a Bloody Mary – and Natasha’s jug.

After throwing in a bill, he adds: “What I would really like to put in there is a bullet for the guy.”

“Get in line,” replies barman Joe Paschen.

The bar where the young Irish graduate student Natasha McShane worked has seen a steady stream of people wanting to help her out.

“That’s for the Irish girl,” says another man who walked in and then walked out of Butch McGuire’s.

They have been walking in off the street to throw a few dollars in the jar, others are regulars who knew the young Irish woman.

Thousands of dollars have been raised to help out Natasha and her family. It’s really the only thing that can be done as those who know her wait for news from Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

This is where the 23-year-old – who may never walk or talk again according to prosecutors – remains in a drug-induced coma, in a critical condition.

This was the prosecution’s principal reason for arguing against giving bail to a man and a woman charged in connection with the attack.

Marcy Cruz, 25, was charged with aggravated battery and armed robbery, the same charges against her boyfriend Heriberto Viramontes, 31. He was denied bail by the same court on Wednesday.

Cruz allegedly drove a get-away van after the attack.

Natasha had done her research after arriving in Chicago in January, checking out all the large Irish bars where she might get work.

“When we heard that Northern Irish brogue, with that accent, well, she got the job,” says Joe Paschen.

And Natasha, who worked a few nights a week while attending the University of Illinois, did not disappoint. Joe said: “She is diminutive, only 4’10, but she is just this great barrel of energy, She had a real work ethic and she would tell me that’s from my mother and my da.”

She was working nights, then attending college in the morning. Staff at Butch’s say she would sometimes have a few drinks with them, then head home because she had to get up in the morning for school.

Natasha was looking forward to her summer in Chicago after securing an internship that would allow her to remain.

And summer in Chicago means long hot days, neighbourhood parties almost every weekend, festivals with music and food from every part of the world, gigs downtown, barbecues and baseball if you want – and the vast Lake Michigan and its miles of beaches on your doorstep.

Natasha was a free spirit and ready to have a good time in Chicago, said her friend Stacy Jurich, who is still being treated in hospital for injuries suffered in the attack early last Friday.

The young Irish woman was planning to travel to Cape Cod and elsewhere and host family and friends. Her mother and sister had made plans to come over next week. Both are in Chicago now for very different reasons.

Natasha lives in the Bucktown area, a hip neighbourhood of half million dollar homes, condominiums and apartments let to young workers and students.

People in Bucktown often socialise and shop in next door Wicker Park, an area packed with trendy bars, restaurants, high-end clothes stores and tarot card readers.

Early last Friday week, as Natasha and Stacy Jurich were walking the short distance from Wicker Park to Bucktown when they were attacked. They had just passed under a railway bridge – well-lit and on a main road – when a man came from behind and smashed a baseball bat across their heads, repeatedly. People here have been shocked by the stupid, senseless, brutal crime visited on Natasha and her friend. Yet this is a fairly violent city at the best of times.

In the last two weeks, seven people were killed and 15 wounded in a 12-hour period, a 20- month-old girl was fatally shot in the head in the back of her parents’ car and two brothers and another man were found bound and beaten to death. And these are only a few incidents. Close to 120 people have been murdered in Chicago this year.

The violence has prompted two lawmakers to call for the National Guard, the US-based militia, to be deployed in some neighbourhoods in the city. It’s regarded as a ridiculous suggestion by many and has been shot down by the police chief and the mayor, but reveals one populist view.

But most of the shootings and murders are confined to certain neighbourhoods and are gang-related. The innocent that die are often those caught in the habitually erratic, and criminally insane, gunfire. There are muggings and random violence across this city, like any other, but the attack on Natasha and Stacy has provoked headlines and chatter like few others.

What was the point of smashing a baseball bat over their heads for they would likely have handed over whatever he wanted, is asked repeatedly. He must have been off his head, say others.

Liam and Sheila McShane, who have their own room in the hospital where their daughter is being cared for, took time away from her bedside to attend a prayer service at Chicago Old St Patrick’s Church on Thursday evening.

After the service, Mark Campbell, their neighbour from Silverbridge in Co Armagh who now lives in Chicago, said: “In time we hope that we’ll have her back on her feet and home with her family.”