CBS News Chicago journalists escape racist attack near Adler Planetarium

Two men in a white truck rushed CBS News Chicago reporter Asal Rezaei and photographer Jeramie Bizzle near the Adler Planetarium just before 4:30 p.m. Sunday, shouting racial slurs at one of them as the crew prepared to go on the air. One of the men smashed Bizzle’s camera while the other shattered the windshield of the news truck, turning a routine live shot into a sudden street assault on Chicago’s lakefront.

Chicago police said the men also ordered a dog to attack, but the animal did not. Rezaei and Bizzle got away unharmed, even as the encounter left their equipment damaged and the crew shaken in a highly visible part of the city’s Museum Campus. CBS News Chicago said the attack happened on the 900 block of East Solidarity Drive.

The setting sharpened the impact of the assault. The Adler Planetarium describes itself as America’s first planetarium, and the stretch of East Solidarity Drive sits in one of Chicago’s most public broadcast backdrops, where crews regularly set up for live reports with the skyline and lakefront behind them. The racism alleged in the attack pushed the episode beyond vandalism, putting it squarely in the broader problem of threats and intimidation faced by journalists doing ordinary assignments in public places.

CBS News Chicago later learned that police arrested three people in Brighton Park after a separate pursuit, in a case that involved a gun being pointed at someone else. The station also pointed to the broader risk environment for local media crews in the city, where a CBS Chicago reporter’s vehicle was the subject of an allegedly unprovoked attack in Broadview in September 2025. CBS spokesperson said the company was “shocked and horrified by this crime and we are grateful that our journalists are safe.”

The Chicago Police Department’s investigation remained ongoing as of Monday.