Irish woman fighting for life after baseball bat mugging in US

A YOUNG Irish woman is in a critical condition in a US hospital after she was subjected to a violent beating with a baseball bat during a robbery in the early hours of Friday.

Natasha McShane, 23, from Silverbridge in south Armagh, was robbed and assaulted in an up-market area of Chicago by an unknown assailant while walking home with Stacy Jurich, 24. They were returning home after a night out celebrating the end of college exams.

The Queens University Belfast graduate and UCD student, who is studying at the University of Illinois and has recently obtained an internship in the US, has remained in a critical condition at the city’s Advocate Trinity Hospital.

Her parents, Liam and Sheila McShane, flew out to Chicago on Friday to be at her bedside.

While Ms Jurich is said to be stable, Ms McShane’s parents have been told their daughter is in critical condition and has sustained serious head injuries.

The violent assault on the two young women occurred at about 3.30am local time in Chicago on Friday while they were coming back from a friend’s house in the Bucktown area of the city. The attacker is understood to have struck the women over the head with an aluminium baseball bat several times, before stealing their purses.

At Sunday Mass yesterday, Massgoers at St Patrick’s church in Crossmaglen, Co Armagh, near where Ms McShane is from, paid tribute to the 23-year-old, who had been studying for an MA in urban and regional planning at UCD before arriving in the US.

Local SDLP representative Geraldine Donnelly described Ms McShane as “a beautiful girl, a very bright girl” with a strong personality.

In 2008, Ms McShane was awarded a cross-border scholarship, organised by Universities Ireland, to encourage students to carry out postgraduate studies at an institution on the other side of the north/south border from where they normally lived.

The Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed that they are providing consular assistance to her family through the Irish consulate in Chicago.

While a popular destination for Irish tourists and students, the city is statistically one of the most dangerous in the US.