Police suspect homicide in the case of Sarai A. Michaels, a 31-year-old Chicago resident who was found dead in a River North hotel just after midnight on Oct. 11.

Two friends of the victim told police that they were waiting for Michaels in the lobby of the Hotel Felix, 111 W. Huron St., for about half an hour before they went up to her rented room on the 12th floor of the building. Upon entering the room, the witnesses said they found Michaels lying motionless on the floor in a pool of blood.

Officers at the scene later found a bloody 6-inch broken knife blade next to the victim, and surveillance footage from the hotel’s cameras showed a man in a hooded sweatshirt following Michael’s onto an elevator.

At around 8 p.m. on Oct. 5, officers patrolling Olive Park near the 1000 block of East Ohio Street stopped and questioned Amit A. Patel, of New Jersey. When the officers asked for his ID, Patel, 31, suddenly jumped over into Lake Michigan and began swimming northbound.

About an hour later, a dive team from the police department’s marine unit found Patel underwater. The man was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital and pronounced dead at 9:32 p.m.

While waiting at a Wendy’s restaurant on the 2300 block of North Ashland at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 9, a 60-year-old woman gave a man some spare change.

After leaving the restaurant, the man, believed to be in his late 20s, followed the woman to her car and demanded that she give him more money while preventing her from closing the door to the vehicle.

The victim attempted to put her purse under the front passenger seat but the man reached over her and grabbed it. The offender then fled westbound on Medill Avenue.

The purse contained $600 in cash and various ID and credit cards. The woman requested that police check surveillance footage at the restaurant.

A woman told police that while she riding CTA train at 5:45 a.m. on Oct. 9, a man believed to be in his late 20s grabbed her phone and fled the train at the North/Clybourn Red Line stop.

The victim, 33, stated that she did not know how to contact staff on the train, and later notified an attendant of the incident after she exited at the Red Line Argyle stop. The victim was uninjured.

Police arrested a 16-year-old boy for attempted robbery on a CTA train the afternoon of Oct. 5.

A 21-year-old woman told police that at around 2:00 p.m., the boy ran up behind her as she was exiting a train at the Brown and Purple lines’ Sedgwick station and grabbed her phone out of her hands.

The woman attempted to hold onto the phone but the boy pushed her to the ground and fled toward the exit. Due to some patron congestion, he was unable to leave the station, and instead turned around and began running in the other direction, pushing people out of the way and swinging his fists as he attempted to escape.

At that point, a group of citizens grabbed him and held him to the ground while they waited for police to arrive. As he was being subdued, a witness told police that he was heard saying “You stupid b****! I almost got away!”

After being placed into custody, the offender told officers that the incident was his first attempt at robbery.

A 26-year-old man told police that he was standing on the sidewalk on the first block of East Chicago Avenue on the afternoon of Oct. 9 when a teenage boy rode up on a bike and snatched an iPad from his hands.

The boy and a friend then rode off through a McDonald’s parking lot, where the latter was stopped by a security guard. The boy was found to not be in possession of any stolen items, but he allegedly told the guard the offender’s name.