Surveillance video showing a confrontation and a violent attack on a young girl selling flowers is raising new questions in the city’s River North Neighborhood.
Restauranteur Dam Sanchez said he released the footage, recorded outside his Moe’s Cantina establishment, to sound an alarm about the dangers of unaccompanied children selling items late at night on Chicago’s streets.
“There’s thousands of these unaccompanied children in the city late at night…three o’clock in the morning, four in the morning,” Sanchez said. “We call 911. We talk about it in the CAPS meetings. Police show up and the parents are not around.”
Sanchez said the problem has been growing for the past two and a half years. His greatest fear is a confrontation between one of the vendors and an intoxicated patron of one of the neighborhood’s many bars and restaurants could lead to significant injuries or worse.
“This is scary because somebody is going to abduct these children,” Sanchez said.
Neighbors are shocked by the video but they say they’re used to the sight of very young children selling flowers and lighted tchotchkes on weekend nights.
“I know they sell their flowers, they sell their candies, and it’s just calm like that. I didn’t think anyone would have a reason to attack them,” Brian Eke said.
The Chicago Street Vendor Association admits the problem is one that does affect a lot of their 6,000 members.
“There are always those concerns. They shouldn’t be out. They should be with parents,” said outreach organizer Maria Orozco.
She said no one should be selling on the streets of Chicago unless they are 18 or older, but she said that many of the child vendors are recent migrants.
“Some have just arrived. We don’t know their background or their culture so it’s kind of hard to blame the parents or blame the people when things like this happen,” she said.
The incident captured on video was never reported to police, and the people involved have not been identified. Still, Chicago Police say they are now looking into the circumstances surrounding the alleged attack.
Sanchez believes that there is more to the story than just children selling things on the streets. He suggests others may be making it possible for them to sell.
“What draws my curiosity is how a 5-year-old, a 10-year-old has a $1,000 cell phone in their hands and asking people to Venmo them money,” he said. “Every flower bucket is identical, and every bouquet is identical from the West Side to the South Side to North Side in the city of Chicago. It’s all the same and very well organized.”
Still, Sanchez wants the city and state agencies to do more to protect the juvenile vendors.
“We are asking the city, it’s not a political thing, it’s a child safety issue,” he said.
He plans to hire additional security after the incident.
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