A 19-year-old man with active arrest warrants in six Chicagoland counties is charged with carjacking a driver at gunpoint inside a Fulton River District residential parking garage on Thursday evening.
Prosecutors and police said the 27-year-old victim had just parked his white 2011 BMW when Anthony Bass and an unidentified woman approached him around 6:30 p.m. in the 300 block of North Halsted.
The duo took the man’s valuables and keys, then directed him to the bottom of a staircase, where they ordered him to lie down, prosecutors said. They then allegedly returned to the victim’s BMW but couldn’t figure out how to start it.
So, the woman brought him back to his car and ordered him to start the vehicle, according to prosecutors. After he started the car, Bass and the woman ordered the victim to lie down next to the car, and they drove away, prosecutors said. Surveillance cameras allegedly recorded the hijacking.
Around 10:15 a.m. Saturday, a CPD license plate reader detected the stolen car moving in traffic, and patrol units were dispatched to locate the car. They found it in an alley on the 3400 block of West 12th Place with Bass inside, according to the allegations. He ran, they caught him, and Bass later “made admissions,” prosecutors said.
Bass, who was found guilty of robbery as a juvenile, is charged with aggravated vehicular hijacking with a firearm. Judge Arthur Willis set bail at $500,000 in the hijacking case and ordered Bass to go onto electronic monitoring if he can post the mandatory 10% deposit.
But Bass has other problems. Lots of them. Willis told Bass he was also being held on two felony retail theft shoplifting warrants in Cook County; two retail theft warrants from Kane County; a retail theft warrant from Lake County, two burglary warrants from McHenry County, and a retail theft warrant from DuPage County. The bonds in those cases total $278,000, Willis said. Bass will also need to post 10% of that amount to get out of jail.
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