After several random attacks on women led to months of fear in Chicago’s Loop, victims are starting to see justice as one so-called serial puncher was sentenced to prison Thursday and charges were announced against another.
A 37-year-old man named Derek Rucker was sentenced to 7 years in prison Thursday for a string of random attacks on and around Chicago train lines, including two in which he spat on women on the train and one in which he punched a woman in River North.
Plus, police also announced Thursday 32-year-old William Livingston is facing two felony counts of aggravated battery in a public place after striking two women on June 12 in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.
Livingston has previously been arrested more than a dozen times for similar crimes, including an attack that left a mom with brutal facial fractures, bruises and emotional trauma.
Kathleen Miles, a 56-year-old mom of 11, was knocked out when a man randomly punched her as she walked from her office in the Loop to Union Station around 5:30 p.m. in mid-August.
Surveillance video of the attack obtained by CWB Chicago and later shared with NBC Chicago shows Miles lying unconscious in the crosswalk after she was punched.
Miles spoke with NBC Chicago as she was recovering from her injuries in early September.
“He came from behind, he kinda blasted between the two of us and separated us pushed us apart and stood in front of me and hit me in the face with so much force that he broke the bones of my face,” she said.
Her temporal and orbital bones were broken in the attack, she said, and her nose was displaced.
A north suburban woman is sharing her story after being randomly attacked while walking to Union Station, and her attack wasn’t the first. Vi Nguyen has more.
“It’s not okay, and I’m going to stand up and speak to make sure that this doesn’t happen or something worst to someone else,” she said in September. “I would feel guilty and responsible if I didn’t speak.”
Miles told NBC Chicago Thursday that she hopes Livingston will be “held accountable” and prevented from carrying out future attacks.
NBC Chicago spoke with two other victims of attacks by Livingston in 2022 after he punched four women in a span of 20 minutes near Jackson and Wabash in Chicago’s Loop.
“I’m still [in] a little shock that this guy with so many history of attacks that he just walks away in the streets of Chicago,” one of the victims said in 2022.
The trauma of the attack still follows Miles, she said.
“I struggle with it every day, I struggle with just fear of being hurt,” she said.