CHICAGO STREET CLEANERS DISCOVER 61-YEAR-OLD CHINESE CHEF NEAR DEATH FROM VICIOUS CAR JACKING

Chicago chef ‘left for dead’ in brutal carjacking near Chinatown 

 

By Joshua Rhett Miller

 

New York Post 

April 15, 2022

 

 

Jin Yut Lew was viciously beaten during a carjacking near Chicago's Chinatown 

 

A suburban Chicago chef was brutally beaten and robbed during a carjacking and may never fully recover from a severe brain injury, his traumatized sons said.

Jin Yut Lew, 61, was carjacked, robbed and “left for dead” during a violent attack on April 7 near Chicago’s Chinatown section, where he was assaulted with a blunt object to the head and face, his sons said.

“He was found by street cleaners who reported the incident to the police and an ambulance brought him to the hospital,” Alford and Richard Lew said in an online fundraiser. “He required immediate brain surgery and was diagnosed with severe brain trauma which led to swelling and internal bleeding.”

Lew, who immigrated to the US from China in the early 1980s, remains in a coma at a hospital where he was transported after being found “incoherent” and bleeding from the head, Chicago police told The Post Friday.

Lew’s sons said he was well-respected in Chicago’s Chinese restaurant community, where for 40 years he provided countless new immigrants opportunities to begin their lives in the US.

“Many of these colleagues went on to be restaurant leaders across Chicago,” Alford and Richard Lew said. “With this injury, his work in the kitchen will likely be over.”

The fundraiser for Lew’s medical bills and subsequent physical therapy had eclipsed $63,000 as of Friday.

 

Lew was found “incoherent” and bleeding from the head, police told The Post 

 

Alford Lew, 35, of Seattle, told the Chicago Tribune his mother recently relayed that crime in the Windy City, particularly carjackings, were becoming far too frequent.

 

                      

Lew is a respected chef. His son said he worries his dad won’t be able to cook again

 

“There was a while where I was like, ‘It’s just her being paranoid,’ but it’s not,” Lew told the newspaper. “This is happening … It’s getting ridiculous, actually. I mean, it’s frustrating. We want them caught.”

Detectives are investigating the incident as an aggravated vehicular hijacking. No arrests had been made as of early Friday, a Chicago police spokeswoman told The Post.

Jin Yut Lew, who was driving a 2008 Lexus SUV at the time, has had at least two surgeries since the attack and wasn’t able to speak late Thursday.

He had worked as the head chef for the past three decades at Chi Tung restaurant in Chicago suburb Evergreen Park, but was readying to launch a new project. But doctors at Stroger Hospital have given his family a bleak outlook, Alford Lew told the Tribune.

“They said it was like the highest level of brain injury they have classification for,” Lew said.

Co-workers at Chi Tung, meanwhile, said they were devastated and appalled by the attack.

“We sincerely hope he will fight through this,” general manager Peggy Wu told the Chicago Sun-Times. “He doesn’t deserve this. He worked hard his entire life … Cooking is passion. And then, my goodness, this  … Cookig is passion. And then, my goodness, this happened.”