'Eye For Eye': Woman Arrested At La Grange Gym

LA GRANGE, IL – A Brookfield woman who wanted to administer justice involving "an eye for an eye" attacked others earlier this month at a La Grange gym, local police said.

Karen T. Olowu, 27, was accused of spray-painting a car in the back of Absolution CrossFit, 700 E. Elm Ave., and then pouring a beer on a person's head.

This information came from a police report that Patch obtained through a public records request. The incident was shortly after noon March 4.

A responding officer recognized Olowu from a previous incident in which she committed aggravated battery, police said.

Olowu refused to follow the officer's commands to put her hands behind her back, according to the report. She stood up on the wooden crate that she was sitting on.

The officer asked Olowu to step down. Police said she replied, "No, what are you going to do, Officer? Beat me again?"

She was told she was under arrest. As officers approached her, Olowu said, "If you touch me, I am going to defend myself."

Olowu was taken to the ground and placed in handcuffs, police said.

As officers placed her in a squad car, Olowu went limp and had to be picked up, police said. Officers said she then kicked them.

Olowu was carrying a kitchen knife and a wooden bludgeon, the report said.

During an interview, she said Absolution CrossFit let her know she was no longer allowed there, police said. She said she had been going to the gym for a few years and that she had a sexual relationship with someone at the gym, police said.

Olowu admitted to throwing weights around the gym, police said.

"I was in an eye-for-an-eye kind of mood," Olowu was quoted as saying. "I was wrong. I was not proud of what I did."

When an officer asked Olowu whether she spray-painted the car, she seemed shocked, looked at the officer with wide eyes and denied it, according to the report.

She then was quoted as saying, "I had to get it off my chest. I didn't want to hurt anybody. I'm not a violent person."

When asked why she resisted arrest, Olowu said nobody wants to be in handcuffs or "embarrassed in front of their community," police said.

She said she was sorry she hurt the officers, police said.

Olowu was charged with aggravated battery, battery, unlawful use of a weapon, resisting a police officer, disorderly conduct and criminal defacement of property, police said.