Tom Schabow played a pivotal role in helping a neighbor Dec. 9 in Uptown as another man was attacking her.
Schabow, a 32-year-old server, was returning from work that night in the tony Gold Coast district to his Uptown neighborhood. "I was just getting changed out of my work clothes and heard something out my window," Schabow, an openly gay man, told Windy City Times. "I was listening and heard it again, so I yelled back to my roommate it sounded like a girl was asking for help."
Cell phone in hand, he followed the sounds of struggle to the next building, finding a man atop a woman in the entranceway. He called out to them. "The guy got up, looked over at me, and went right back down on top of her," he said. "And I was like, 'Dude, get the fuck off her!'"
Schabow called 911. "The police response time was amazing," he said. "If it wasn't for [that], I don't know that I would have reacted the way that I did."
As the squad cars converged, the assailant jumped on his bicycle to escape down the same sidewalk Schabow was yelling at him from, "and that's when I just grabbed him off of his bike, flipped him off of it, and threw on to the groundon to his face," he said.
Schabow's only regret about the night is that he didn't intervene sooner. The attacker, Jason Gurneau, a 32-year-old homeless man and repeat criminal offender, also nabbed the victim's purse. After thwarting the escape, Schabow brought the purse back to the woman... and saw the horrific extent of her injuries: the lacerations and the swelling from the beating, strangulation and rape.
The Chicago Tribune reported that at Gurneau's hearing the following day, Assistant State's Attorney Jamie Dickler reiterated that "Gurneau told authorities he should have 'finished the [expletive] off' and also said he 'should have beaten the [expletive] out of her.'"
In all likelihood, had it not been for Schabow, the victim could have ended up another uptown murder statistic. "Everybody needs to be aware of your surroundings at all times. It doesn't matter who you are," Schabow cautioned. "If you need help, yell for help. Because he was telling her not to yell for help, and if she would've listened to him, she probably would've been dead right now."
Schabow visited her in the hospital once she no longer needed intensive care. "She was doing a lot better," he said. "She thanked me for saving her life."