Man charged with attempted murder after he “stalked people like they were prey”

“I’ve been around for a very long time, and from what I heard, if this is true, this is the epitome of evil,” Cook County Judge John Fitzgerald Lyke Jr said during a bond hearing in the Leighton Criminal Court Building Sunday afternoon. “This defendant stalked these people like they were prey and ended up stabbing them and watched as they suffered.”

28-year-old Bryant McCalip has been charged with three counts of attempted murder and three counts of aggravated battery, great bodily harm after allegedly stabbing three different homeless men between July 15th and August 18th.  He has been ordered to be held without bail.

Discussing the accusations against McCalip for the most recent stabbing which was caught on CTA Red Line cameras, Judge Lyke said, “He looked at him a few minutes and then attacks. And walked away. And walked away,” he stressed.  It was a similar pattern seen in the other stabbings, one of which was also caught on surveillance cameras.

McCalip is additionally suspected for a homicide that happened between July 7th and 9th.  The matter is still under investigation though, and charges have not been filed against McCalip at this time.

In that case, 58-year-old Aaron Curry was found dead on a mattress where he had been sleeping in a park.  He was found to have been stabbed multiple times in the neck and stomach, with the blade of a knife lodged in his right shoulder.  The handle of the broken knife was recovered from the grass nearby.

McCalip is due back in court on August 28th.