A Lakeview woman was robbed and carjacked at gunpoint after parking near her home Friday night, police said. Carjackings were also reported Thursday in West Rogers Park and Bucktown. The latest reports are part of a steady increase in carjackings that’s unfolding even as the Chicago Police Department falsely claims that hijacking reports are on the decline.
In the latest incident, a 22-year-old woman parked her BMW 320i and walked toward her home on the 1600 block of West Grace around 11:57 p.m. Friday, said Officer Michael Carroll, a CPD spokesperson.
A gunman confronted the woman at her front gate and demanded her keys and valuables, Carroll said. She complied, handing over her phone, money, bag, and the car’s keys. He then drove away with her vehicle, which is white, has Ohio license plates, and features an Arizona State University sticker on the back. The woman was not injured, Carroll said.
Carroll said the carjacker is a Black male in his early 20’s who stands 6-feet to 6’1” tall and weighs 160 to 180 pounds. The hijacker wore a black flat-rim baseball cap, a black sweatshirt with red and white words on the front, black jeans, and a “tube-like” face covering that has yellow and black coloring.
In West Rogers Park, a suburban man was carjacked by a group of offenders early Thursday, according to a CPD report. The 25-year-old Schiller Park resident was at a gas station near Devon and Ridge when four or five men took his phone, money, and tan 2001 GMC Yukon around 3 a.m., the report said.
There is a shred of good news to report from Bucktown, though: A group of would-be carjackers who tried to take a man’s vehicle as he unloaded it near his home got away empty-handed because the man didn’t have his keys with him.
According to a CPD report, the victim was removing things from his car on the 2100 block of North Leavitt when a black Volvo pulled up, and four men got out to demand control of the vehicle. But they were out of luck. He didn’t have the keys, and a couple of neighbors began yelling at the carjackers to leave the man alone. They did, speeding away in the car they arrived in.
Chicago police data, which is quarantined for a week before being released to the public, show nine carjackings reported in the first two days of July. That compares to three during the opening days of the month in 2020.
There were 132 carjackings last month, compared to 114 in June 2020; 111 in May compared to 96 in May 2020; 99 in April, up from 64 during the same month last year; and 82 in March, up from 57 a year before.
From January 1 through July 2, Chicago police took 774 carjacking reports, compared to 475 during the same time last year.
Despite all of that, CPD claimed in a July 1 press release that “the decline of vehicular hijackings continued” during June.
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