It seems like it was just a couple of months ago when we told you that a Cook County judge sentenced Jakolbi Lard to three years probation for robbing a 55-year-old man at the Southport Brown Line station and battering a witness who intervened.
In fact, it was just a couple of months ago — on July 8.
Lard, 20, is back in jail already. Cops say they caught him driving a car that was hijacked in Edgewater earlier this week.
The 71-year-old carjacking victim was parking near Rosemont Avenue and Kenmore Avenue when another car pulled up next to him around 2:30 a.m. Monday. Two men wearing ski masks got out of the second car, displayed handguns, and ordered the man to hand over his valuables and get out of his blue Toyota RAV4. He complied, and the offenders drove away southbound on Sheridan Road his car, accompanied by the silver SUV that they arrived in.
Around 7:30 Tuesday evening, police ran the plate on the stolen car at a South Side gas station and learned that it had been hijacked at gunpoint, according to a CPD report. Cops detained Lard because they saw him walking away from the SUV, the report said.
Surveillance video showed Lard driving the carjacked RAV4 into the gas station lot, getting out, and walking inside, prosecutors said. They said he was also carrying the hijacked car’s key fob and the victim’s RTA reduced fare permit.
Interestingly, Lard was also carrying the key fobs for a Hyundai and a Nissan, according to CPD records.
Prosecutors charged Lard with felony possession of a stolen motor vehicle.
Judge Charles Beach set bail at $25,000 and ordered Lard to go onto electronic monitoring if he can post a 10% deposit. But Beach also ordered him held without bail for violating the terms of probation in the Southport Brown Line robbery case.
On the evening of January 16, 2020, police responded to the Southport station after 911 callers reported that a passenger had been robbed on board a train. Cops arrived to find the alleged victim and a good Samaritan detaining Lard on the platform.
Prosecutors said Lard stole a 55-year-old man’s phone on the train and then battered a witness who came to the victim’s aid. Lard also struck the victim when the man tried to get his phone back, the spokesperson said. Two other men who were reportedly involved in the mugging got away.
Lard’s father, Charles, was the oldest of 21 people to die in the E2 nightclub tragedy in 2003, according to a contemporaneous Chicago Tribune report.
Two days after the robbery, detectives tracked down one of the other alleged robbers, 19-year-old Meleh Jackson of River North. Jackson was supposed to be on electronic monitoring for a pending domestic violence case at the time of the robbery, and he was on probation for theft in a case that began as a robbery charge.
He also received probation in the Southport robbery.
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