The Bloody Streets of Rogers Park

The trail of blood split as the adversaries ran away from the scene - and each other. A fair amount of blood remains highly visible on the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the 7-11 store where two people went at each other with knives. A clerk at 7-11 told me that the fight went down between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning on Friday, March 7. The store is on the northeast corner of W. Pratt and N. Sheridan in Rogers Park, a Chicago neighborhood know worldwide for its drug traffic, murder and mayhem. Craig Gernhardt and I were walking south on N. Sheridan early this afternoon when we spotted the trail of blood at the southeast corner of Farwell and Sheridan, one block north of the 7-11. As Craig and I followed the heavy drops of blood, a neighbor walking toward us remarked on it. "Lots of it," he commented, "there's a pool of blood at the 7-11." There was a considerable amount of blood in front of the 7-11, but not exactly a "pool" of it. The spot where the initial stabbing and slashing took place was obvious - just outside the door on the Pratt side. Okay, we thought aloud, one of them took off and ran north. But that trail seemed to end at Farwell. The other bloody trail, however, was clearly visible and went off south. We followed the blood one block to W. Columbia Avenue, where the bloody trail continued westward. We noticed that the blood did not seem to slow down. That is, the flow seemed to remain constant as the injured person walked along the sidewalk. Then we realized that a pattern repeated itself: The pattern of an athletic shoe's sole, the right foot. The person was probably bleeding from their right side, leg or above, and blood was probably running down the person's right leg and onto the right side of their right shoe. Near the CTA overpass on Columbia, the blood trail crossed the street to the south side. It continued to N. Glenwood Avenue. This is where the mystery deepened. The blood trail went into the side entryway of 6638 N. Glenwood and stopped in front of a doorway. There was no blood inside the door, and it appeared as if the person paused here to rest. The trail did not double back to the sidewalk. Did they go into the building? Unknown. Later in the day, I ventured back to Farwell and Sheridan, determined to follow the bloody trail of the other knife fight participant. I did find a short trail of blood in some snow, well off the sidewalk and east of Sheridan. But it ended abruptly at the curb. No sign of any more blood between Sheridan and the cul de sac of Farwell. Again, a mystery. There is a police camera directly across the street from the 7-11, where the knife fight occured. Perhaps it can tell us something. Perhaps Kevin O'Kneel can solve this mystery with the CSI Unit of his CAPS 2431 Special Ops Team. Perhaps not. RELATED: The Bench: 24th District CAPS: A Failure To Communicate