Man accused of slashing throat of DePaul grad tried to escape after U.S. marshals arrested him in Texas

The Chicago Police Memorial Foundation honored 10 Chicago police detectives, two sergeants and an officer involved in the arrest of a man accused of slashing the throat of a DePaul University grad in Lincoln Park, several robberies and two carjackings. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

After arresting a man accused of slashing the throat of a DePaul University grad, U.S. Marshals decided he was too dangerous to fly on a commercial jet from Texas to Chicago.

So Adam Bramwell, 32, was put aboard a U.S. Marshals aircraft commonly known as Con Air.

Normally, two Chicago cops would have flown to Houston and sandwiched a handcuffed Bramwell on a return flight to Chicago aboard a commercial jet.

But Bramwell, 32, made his intentions clear shortly after his arrest Aug. 7.

“He was trying to get away, out of squad cars and stuff like that,” Sgt. Brian Forberg, a member of the department’s fugitive apprehension unit, said during an awards ceremony Tuesday at the Chicago Patrolmen’s Federal Credit Union in the West Loop. Forberg was among 13 detectives, sergeants and officers honored for helping identify and locate Bramwell.

U.S. Marshals, using intelligence provided by Chicago police, were surveilling Bramwell at a Greyhound bus station outside Houston but momentarily lost him after he changed clothes, Forberg said. A short time later, marshals stopped an Arizona-bound bus Bramwell had boarded and took him into custody, he said.

Adam Bramwell

Detective Scott Reiff, who led the CPD investigation, said he and fellow officers were pleased to know the arrest brought a measure of comfort to the DePaul grad, who nearly died.

“She was very excited, as well as her family was, so we were very gratified to give them justice,” Reiff said Tuesday.

During the July 18 attack, Bramwell allegedly dragged the 22-year-old woman into an alley off the 2300 block of North Halsted Street in the Lincoln Park neighborhood about 3:30 a.m. and slashed her throat when she resisted.

Around the time of the attack, Bramwell allegedly went on a robbery spree that included two carjackings.

Bramwell, of the Washington Park neighborhood, is charged with 11 felonies and is being held without bail at the Cook County Jail.

He was on parole at the time of the attack for a 2017 conviction of unlawful use of a weapon. Bramwell, sentenced to four years in prison, was released in March from the Dixon Correctional Center, according to state prison records.