STMW
CHICAGO — Shermain Miles read her Bible on the train, ignoring the wind’s destruction outside as she returned to Chicago on Monday and prepared to pick up the pieces of her own shattered life.
For those who had been dreading her return to a city where she has amassed 396 arrests since 1978, Miles said: “If they can find it in their hearts to forgive me . . .”
The metal doors to Logan Correctional Center in Downstate Lincoln opened for Miles on Monday, after she served almost one year for her latest tangle with the law: assaulting Ald. James Cappleman (46th) two summers ago in Uptown. A white plastic cross dangled from Miles’ neck as an Illinois Department of Corrections officer escorted her to the Chicago-bound Amtrak train at the platform in tiny Lincoln.
“I got a lawyer to sue y’all,” Miles said as a Chicago Sun-Times photographer approached.
But after settling into her seat and enjoying a Snickers bar from the food car, Miles softened, saying she has permanently given up booze, drugs and her old buddies — a cocktail that often drove her to violence or left her lying in a stupor along a busy stretch of Bryn Mawr in Edgewater.
“I’m just not going to go back around there,” said Miles, 52. “I can love [my friends] from a distance. Anybody that’s drugging, I can’t be around.”
Full story: Woman Arrested 396 Times Seeks New Start After Release From Prison