McShane Struggles A Year After Attack
SILVERBRIDGE, Northern Ireland (CBS/WBBM) -- It has been one year since a 23-year-old woman from Northern Ireland, Natasha McShane, was beaten with a baseball bat during a robbery in the Bucktown neighborhood.
As WBBM Newsradio 780's Steve Miller reports, McShane's father says her recuperation has been "very difficult."
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McShane, now 24, was taken back to her native Northern Ireland from Chicago last July, and her father, Liam – speaking to WBBM 780 from Northern Ireland – says the family has been second-guessing the decision to bring her home.
"We've been thinking we shouldn't have come; we should have stayed," he said.
The family spokesman in Chicago is attorney John Colbert, and he says McShane's condition is not improving.
"There hasn't been significant progress made," he said. "In actual fact, she's taken a couple of steps back."
Colbert says when McShane was in Chicago, she was walking with assistance, but, "right now, she's wheelchair-bound" and she barely speaks.
Liam McShane says the family doesn't even ask doctors about Natasha's prognosis.
"We don't even want to know," he said. "Whatever surgery she has to have, just get it done, and hope and pray."
Around 3:30 a.m. on April 23, 2010, McShane and her friend Stacy Starl Jurich were walking in the 1800 block of North Damen Avenue when they were attacked under the old Bloomingdale Line railroad viaduct.
A robber brutally beat the women with a baseball bat and took both their purses.
Heriberto Viramontes, 31, and Marcy Cruz, 26, are now charged with two counts each of attempted murder, armed robbery and aggravated battery.
McShane was an exchange student from County Armagh, Northern Ireland, attending the University of Illinois at Chicago. She was also a part-time waitress at Butch McGuire's tavern on Division Street.
