Three men and two juveniles are charged with stealing piles of clothing from and H&M store on the Magnificent Mile. The accused shoplifting crew tried to escape by running on the Red Line subway tracks from Chicago Avenue to the Clark-Division stop. But cops were waiting when they arrived.
And, video posted to Twitter less than 10 minutes after the heist shows two men on the Chicago Red Line tracks with arms full of clothing, much of it still on hangers.
Chicago might have the wildest boosters ??…. pic.twitter.com/2b4MoFWlQ2
— Glover (@_DamnCanILive) February 20, 2020
Police said officers responded to the store at 840 North Michigan at 11:30 a.m. to handle a report of “an organized theft” in which “a large amount of merchandise was stolen.”
Store employees tracked the thieves to the nearby Chicago Red Line station where the crew jumped onto the tracks and ran north to the next stop. Police were waiting there with handcuffs.
Twitter user DamnCanlLive posted video at 11:39 a.m. that shows two young men walking across the Chicago Red Line tracks and throwing armloads of clothing onto the platform. Plastic clothes hangers are heard rattling.
While a comment on the video says “they just ran outta Nordstrom’s,” the footage appears to show two of the H&M suspects in action.
Prosecutors charged 18-year-olds Alonzo Hall, Kesean Reese, and Keshawn Vance with felony retail theft and misdemeanor trespassing. Hall is also charged with aggravated assault. Vance is charged with possessing more than 30 grams of pot.
Two juveniles, ages 15 and 16, are charged with felony retail theft and misdemeanor trespassing.
Online records show that Reese was charged on Nov. 11 with possessing a firearm on the 8600 block of South Stony Island. And Hall was arrested for retail theft at the Chicago Red Line station on Jan. 20. The status of the earlier cases was not immediately available.
Less than an hour after the H&M incident unfolded, a group of masked men implied they had guns as they robbed the Michigan Avenue Louis Vuitton store of high-end handbags, according to a CPD statement and a police report.
The men fled in a black four-door Volkswagen, which was found abandoned in the Woodlawn neighborhood a short time later. Cops found masks and Louis Vuitton merchandise in the car, police said.
But Chicago’s prolific shoplifting mobs weren’t done. Later on Thursday, a four-man shoplifting team raided Niketown at 669 North Michigan, according to a report.
