Violent attack shattered lives (thug knocks out all her teeth, released after 18 days in jail)

Chicago Tribune ^
Jennifer Hall sits beside her boyfriend, Joe Hoffman. Her hair cascaded down both sides of her face and her lips were parted in a half-smile. It was Aug. 25, 2008, her 36th birthday.

"My hair was down to my waist for 20 years," she said. "I woke up bald -- no teeth, 85 staples in my head -- out of a drug-induced coma."

Two hours after the photo was taken, Hall and Hoffman were attacked by a homeless man, Derrick King, near Wabash Avenue and Roosevelt Road, after telling him they didn't have any cigarettes. King and a second person then beat, stomped and kicked Hall unconscious, she said.

When King, 48, pleaded guilty this October to two criminal charges in the attack and was sentenced to three years in prison, Hall and Hoffman thought he wouldn't be able to harm anyone else -- at least for a while.

But just 18 days after that plea, state records show, King was paroled as part of the early-release program that Gov. Pat Quinn on Wednesday called "a big mistake." And the next day, King allegedly threatened another woman, near the same place he attacked Hall, yelling, "Remember the couple who got beat real bad for not giving a cigarette? That was me," police said.


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Court system fail.

"Remember the couple who got beat real bad for not giving a cigarette? That was me,"

Omg lol what a troll

he was the couple that got beat real bad