A little over a year ago, prosecutors charged Armad Jones with burglarizing a car in Lincoln Park after he allegedly fell asleep inside the vehicle.
If new allegations against Jones are true, he’s continuing to have horrible luck as a burglar.
Prosecutors say surveillance video shows Jones burglarizing the electronics department at Target, 1667 West Division, around midnight on December 21. And then coming back to the store to burglarize it again four hours later.
Jones, 26, stole a phone during his first after-hours shopping trip, prosecutors said. He returned through the same back door around 4:30 a.m. to steal a Fitbit and other electronics, according to the state’s allegations.
He was arrested over the weekend after Target security guards recognized him when he returned to the store during business hours. Prosecutors said he was carrying the same blue backpack and wearing the same hat that the burglar wore. He was allegedly carrying five stolen credit cards issued in different names, too.
One of the stolen credit cards was used at a West Loop pharmacy, and video from that store shows Jones is the person who used it, according to prosecutors.
Jones received a three-year sentence in March 2017 for two burglaries, according to court records. The year before that, he received a 142 day jail sentence for burglary of a vehicle in Chicago.
In September 2019, a 27-year-old woman police after she found Jones sleeping behind the wheel of her car in the 1700 block of West Terra Cotta.
During a custodial search at the 19th District station, cops allegedly found a trove of “suspected proceeds from criminal activity” in his possession, including four cellular phones, two portable speakers, seven rings of varying sizes, an iPod, a necklace, and two watches.
It was the third time he was arrested and charged with theft-related crimes that month. He’s been arrested 16 times since 2014.
Now, prosecutors have charged him with two counts of burglary, identity theft, and unlawful possession of debit cards in connection with his arrest at Target. Judge Susana Ortiz set his bail at $10,000, which requires Jones to post a $1,000 bond to get out of jail.
