Chicago – Wides -spread street takeovers teased the far south side of the city on weekends and hid the traffic when crowds gathered to see drivers playing donuts at large intersections.
One scene became violent when a takeover participant threw a large fireworks that exploded in the SUV of a man and set fire to the vehicle. In another incident, two bystanders were hit by a sports car while these donuts spent.
The heaviest activity took place early on Sunday morning along the borders of the south and southeast.
At about 1:45 am, drivers and spectators blocked the intersection of 130th Street and Torrence Avenue so that participants could play donuts on the street. Videos for social media showed a passing motorist in an SUV stopped in the middle of the intersection while two drivers were walking circles around his car.
In one video a participant runs to the driver and seems to exchange words. A second video shows that while that happened, another participant threw an illuminated fireworks in the man’s SUV through the passenger window.
The 49-year-old driver climbed to get out of the car and exploded the device while he was just outside the driver’s door. A spokesperson for the Chicago police said that a second man was also in the vehicle, but he is not seen in the videos. CPD said that no injuries were reported and the perpetrators in general remain.
Here is what it looked like from one angle:
Last night, at a takeover, a man tried to cross the intersection, but he eventually got stuck in the middle. People who attended the acquisition attacked him and threw fireworks into his SUV and set it on fire. pic.twitter.com/jsv5dhpy6z
– Goofies of Chicago (@Chicago_Goofies) March 2, 2025
And here it is from another:
In another acquisition, two people were hit by a donut-spinning sports car.
Acquisitions, also known as ‘sideshows’, began to make news during the Covid era. The groups often took over intersections in the loop, in particular lower Wacker Drive, sometimes rings of fire on the sidewalk for drivers to turn around.
The city reacted by installing traffic islands and speeding that make Donut spinning virtually impossible. But the sideshows just continued to other intersections. CPD has also made so-called ‘caravan teams’, a team of officers who focus on tracing and interrupting car caravans and street acquisitions. Cops also started using “stopsticks” to prevent stunt drivers from leaving the scene.
Criminal rights, although rare, almost always involve young men who live in the suburbs, according to CPD arrest reports. One of the most serious acquisitions issues concerned a participant who crashed his car while fled the police in the 10000 block of South Halsted. His vehicle hit a pole, pierced the gas tank and the car burst into flames and killed three of his passengers. Officers of Justice submitted in the case in December, almost two years after the crash.
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