Wild video shows a female University of Chicago student fighting back against an armed robber, amazingly yanking the magazine out of her attacker’s firearm — as a man sitting feet away watches without helping.
The heroic 21-year-old economics senior, only identified by the first name Madelyn, was one of three students from the university held up at gunpoint just moments apart on Wednesday.
“I see a man in a ski mask coming toward me, and I attempt to keep walking,” Madelyn told NBC Chicago.
Madelyn tussled with the suspect for a few moments as she glanced wildly around her, seemingly imploring a passerby to intervene — with a male student instead just watching while he sat on the ground just feet away, surveillance footage showed.
The armed assailant was “grabbing for my phone and I am kinda pulling it behind my back,” she recalled.
“In the tussle, I was able to take the magazine out of his gun, and I tossed it into a bush,” she added.
“But at the moment, I didn’t know what I was grabbing.”
In the end, the robber made off with Madelyn’s phone, though police later found both the device and the magazine she tossed.
Just five minutes before Madelyn was robbed, two other students walking on opposite sides of the street were confronted by four armed suspects who robbed them before driving away in a black Infiniti, the University of Chicago Police Department said.
The first incident is being investigated by university police, while Madelyn’s case is being handled by the Chicago Police Department, WGN News reported.
There were no injuries in either incident, according to an alert from campus officials.
“I’ve always felt safe, personally. It’s upsetting as students we get these alerts all of the time. They’re very frequent, they vary in the severity of them. It’s just troubling that it becomes so desensitizing,” Madelyn told WGN News.
“You never think it will be you and when I was confronted with that moment, I was in utter disbelief,” she added of her experience.
As of Friday morning, no arrests had been made in either case.
