Prosecutors have charged a third man in connection with the May 30, 2020, carjacking of a driver in Lincoln Park. Leonard Johnson, 22, is charged with vehicular hijacking and robbery. Judge Mary Marubio ordered him held without bail.
According to the allegations, a 27-year-old man was sitting in his car on the 900 block of West Armitage when Johnson and Isaiah McMiller, 21, pulled him from his car and robbed him along with 21-year-old Joseph Perry.
The three men then drove away with the victim’s car and used his credit card about an hour later at a gas station near Aurora, prosecutors said. CPD detectives allegedly recognized Johnson, McMiller, and Perry in the service station’s surveillance footage. Prosecutors said the victim also identified the men in photo line-ups.
Johnson previously received a three-year prison sentence for robbing a man at the Grand Red Line station in the summer of 2018. Prosecutors said he was on parole at the time of the carjacking.
In that case, Johnson was identified as the “primary aggressor” in a group that surrounded the victim on the subway platform, demanded his wallet, and then tried to withdraw money from an ATM in the station, according to prosecutors.
McMiller and Perry also have criminal backgrounds. In fact, they were charged with robbing a man together in West Ridge in 2018. That victim, age 54, told police Perry and McMiller were two members of a group that mugged him on the 2000 block of West Devon. CPD bodycams recorded McMiller telling cops that “Joseph” had the victim’s stolen phone.
Perry is also seen on bodycam footage telling cops, “I did not take the phone, but I was there…Isaiah [McMiller] took it and gave it to me afterward.” Perry had the victim’s phone, police said.
Less than a month later, Judge Marvin Luckman accepted a guilty plea to reduced charges of theft from Perry and McMiller in exchange for sentences of 18-months court supervision and six days of community service, according to court records.
At the time of the carjacking, Perry had just been released from Cook County jail due to concerns of rapidly spreading COVID cases among inmates. He had been jailed since May 2019 while awaiting trial on allegations of battering a convenience store clerk during a robbery on the 5700 block of North Broadway.
McMiller, who was charged with the carjacking last September, subsequently posted $5,000 to get out of jail. He then landed a job as a security guard at a retail store and shot a co-worker a few weeks ago, prosecutors said.
He is currently being held without bail on that charge.
