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Guardian Angel stabbed in altercation is back on his post

By Andy Grimm, Chicago Tribune –

CHICAGO — Miguel Fuentes was back on patrol with his fellow Guardian Angels on Wednesday, a day after he and three other members of the volunteer security patrol were knifed trying to apprehend a mugger on an L platform.

Fuentes, 40, needed 17 stitches to close a wound on his arm inflicted by a knife-wielding assailant who attacked him and his partners as they struggled with the mugger. It marked his first wound in 24 years since he first donned the red beret of the Guardian Angels as a high school junior.

“I’ve had knives pulled on me a bunch of times. I’ve been shot at — I’ve never been hit — and I’ve fought with guys with guns,” said Fuentes, who is head of the Chicago chapter of the Guardian Angels. “This was the first time I’ve ever been stabbed, though.”

The altercation took place Tuesday at about 11:30 p.m. at the Clark and Division Red Line platform. As Fuentes watched from outside the train, one attacker pistol-whipped a 27-year-old Edgewater man and snatched his iPhone as the train slowed. He bolted onto the platform to find Fuentes and three other Guardian Angels waiting for him.

The four Angels wrestled the man to the ground, but an accomplice pulled out a folding knife and stabbed at them until they released the mugger.

Fuentes suffered a gash on his arm. Mario Rodriguez was stabbed in the head and needed two staples to close the wound; Keaunthi Davis, 22, was cut on his rib cage and needed stitches and Eric Eulogio, 20, an Angel for just four months, was cut on the arm.

The Guardian Angels formed their Chicago chapter in the early 1980s over protests from then-Mayor Jane Byrne and Chicago police officials. Membership peaked soon after at about 200 members. Today, the group has fewer than 50 active members, perhaps none more active than Fuentes, an electrician by day. As often as six nights a week, he and three or more Angels don their red berets and board an L line.

Police spokesman Dave Mirabelli called the Angels’ actions “valiant” but said the department encourages civilians to act as eyes and ears for police, rather than physically confronting violent criminals.

Police union spokesman Pat Camden agreed Fuentes and his compatriots were brave but pointed out that the altercation led to four people suffering knife wounds and the mugger still made off with the victim’s phone.

“They’re not taking the law into their own hands. Their intentions are very, very good, but they are unarmed and they don’t have any power to arrest,” Camden said. “It takes a certain amount of tenacity to do what they do, but they’re lucky nobody got killed.”

Fuentes admitted civilian efforts to fight crime have taken a publicity hit from the controversy surrounding Florida teen Trayvon Martin, who died at the hands of an armed neighborhood watch volunteer.

Guardian Angels only act when they witness a crime being committed and are never armed. They undergo four months of training before they begin patrols, a period when the group tries to weed out would-be “super heroes” who are looking for the sort of action Fuentes encountered Tuesday night.

Fuentes himself was under 5 feet tall when he joined the group at age 16 after admiring the purpose of the men he saw on passing trains in his Little Village neighborhood.

“I’m maybe 5 feet, 4 inches tall (now),” he said. “I don’t have superpowers or anything. But I like helping people. This was all I wanted to do.”

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