CHICAGO — A 27-year-old man is in custody, accused of setting a 75-year-old homeless man, known to Chicago residents as the “Walking Man,” on fire while he slept on a downtown street last week.
According to WLS-TV, Joseph Guardia has been charged with attempted murder and arson in connection with the Wednesday attack on Joseph Kromelis, a well-known member of the city’s homeless community who frequents the downtown area, Chicago police announced Sunday.
Kromelis suffered third-degree burns to nearly half his body and was taken to an area hospital, where he remained listed in critical condition Sunday, the TV station reported.
Kromelis had been sleeping on Lower Wabash Avenue when a man he did not know assaulted him just before 3 a.m. local time, doused him in flammable liquid and set him ablaze.
Related: Chicago’s ‘Walking Man’ lit on fire while sleeping on downtown street, police say
A security officer from a nearby building used a fire extinguisher to extinguish the flames, WLS reported.
The attack came nearly six years to the day after Kromelis was beaten with a baseball bat on May 24, 2016, WFLD-TV reported.
“It’s been nearly 30 years since I first wrote about the Walking Man, who cut a striking figure with his long flowing hair, his 1970s mustache and his spiffy sports jackets and was always just … walking. Zipping along at a brisk stride in his prime, not so swiftly as the years went by, and moving with painful slowness in recent years,” Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper wrote in a Kromelis feature published Sunday.
“From time to time I’d hear from readers or colleagues who had spotted the Walking Man and were always delighted by the sighting. There was something reassuring, something hippie-timeless, about the Walking Man. It seemed he’d be around forever. There’s even a YouTube video from 2006 titled, ‘The Walking Dude, a Dudementary,’ consisting of grainy footage of the Walking Man … well, walking,” Roeper continued, adding, “As of this writing, Kromelis is in critical condition, and officials are saying his chances of survival are not good.”
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