Ashley Knutson and Devontae Garrisson-Johnson, a young couple from Chicago are opening up about the violent attack on them over the weekend during the “Teen Takeover” of the Windy City, which made news all over the country.
Who are Ashley Knutson, Devontae Garrisson-Johnson?
Knutson, aged 20, and Garrisson-Johnson, 22, were outside a Macy’s store on North Wabash Avenue on Saturday night when the frightening scene unfolded where they felt like an unprovoked mob might kill them. According to Knutson, she and her boyfriend were shopping when they encountered “the really big group of people, guys, and girls.”
“DJ had my hand trying to lead me through the crowd of people and they pushed him, they pushed me, and as soon as they pushed me I told DJ, ‘They just shoved me,’” Knutson told Fox News. “And he was like, ‘Don’t shove her, who shoved her?’ And as soon as he said that, everything went crazy. They said they were going to kill us. They turned around and started fighting. I got pushed down to the ground and the whole group went to DJ and not to me. They were jumping him in the middle of the street. It got pretty bad.”
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In a viral video of the incident, Knutson keeps pleading for help. That is when the good Samaritan Lenora Dennis tried to intervene and de-escalate the situation. “I felt like at that moment I needed to take action,” Dennis told NBC Chicago. “By the time he got up, he was bleeding from the mouth, his head, his eyes. He couldn’t make straight eye contact. It felt like he might have been concussed.”
Knutson also added that the police took no action and simple drive by the chaotic area. Dennis corroborated Knutson’s account for the lack of action by the authorities which frustrated her. “I literally went out in the street and held my hands up to a police car and asked them to stop and motioned them over to what was going on, and they just cut a path around me and just kept going,” she said.
The couple was driven to the police station by Dennis to file a report. “I got told by the desk sergeant that this was going to happen and that this was going to keep happening because Brandon Johnson got elected,” she said, alluding to the mayor-elect.
During the attack, the couple’s phones, wallets, and shoes were stolen and they were taken to the hospital with their missing items. “I told the couple that I was going to go home to find them some shoes so that they wouldn’t be barefoot for the rest of the night,” Dennis told the outlet.
Knutson said that she could be more grateful to Dennis for the kindness she had shown that day. “God bless her. She gave us shoes, took us home, and took us to the hospital. Thank you so much. I don’t know where we would have been without her,” she said.
Devontae Garrisson-Johnson suffered injuries to his face, shoulder, and back. “It was very random because all we were doing (is) we had just left Nordstrom and we were looking for somewhere to eat and we saw that group and they just thought they were tough and they wouldn’t move out the way, just out there being stupid, young and dumb, trying to prove a point for nothing,” he recalled.
No arrests have been made so far in the incident.
