Laura Caldwell Victim of Chicago Mugging

Jesus, this is horrible:

Life was imitating art when crime novelist Laura Caldwell lay face

down on a Lincoln Park street holding pieces of her shattered teeth in

her bloody palm.

Her upcoming book, Red Hot Lies,

portrays a red-headed female lawyer walking at night through the Old

Town neighborhood, feeling increasingly uncomfortable as she realizes

she is being followed.

On Thursday, Caldwell, a red-headed attorney who in 2005

successfully defended a man who spent five years in jail awaiting trial

for murder, was jogging at Seminary and Altgeld in Lincoln Park when

she saw two men — one with a hood pulled over his cap and the other

who was lifting his jacket over his head.

Nervous, Caldwell felt the hair rise on the back of her neck.

Suddenly, one of the men kicked her from behind, and she fell onto the

street.

“They smashed my mouth into the pavement and kicked me a few times,”

she said. “They screamed about money, but I said, ‘Guys, I am jogging

and I don’t have any money.’ They took my iPod and ran off.”

Caldwell’s attack was part of a series of muggings in Lincoln Park of late. I’m glad to hear she wasn’t injured further but still…