An 18-year-old man who received 30 days in juvenile detention for carjacking earlier this year was caught on video as he robbed a woman last week, prosecutors said.
Craig K. Williams allegedly admitted to police that the video shows a man robbing the woman while wearing the same clothing that he had on, but he insisted someone else was wearing the clothes.
Assistant State’s Attorney Eric Wojnicki said a car pulled up next to the woman as she settled into her vehicle outside her home, about a mile east of Midway International Airport, around 2:30 p.m. on September 30. The men forced the woman’s car door open as she tried to close it and then demanded her money and her Calvin Klein backpack. She gave them the bag.
One of the men ordered her to give them her phone, too, as the other — who was wearing a blue hoodie with white lettering — held an object that she believed to be a gun near his stomach, Wojnicki said. She complied, and the men fled in the car they stepped out of earlier.
Almost immediately after the robbery, before the woman’s 911 call was even dispatched to police, officers stopped a blue car at a gas station near the woman’s home because it had no rear plates, Wojnicki continued. Two men, including one wearing a blue hoodie with white lettering, got out of the car and ran while two others stayed behind. Wojnicki said one of the runners got away. Craig Williams, allegedly wearing a blue hoodie with white lettering, did not.
Officers who patted him down found a key to the car he ran from in his pocket along with two sets of AirPods, Wojnicki said. That’s when the officers learned that there had just been a robbery nearby, and the people who had been in the car matched the suspect descriptions — including Williams in his blue hoodie with white lettering.
Cops took a closer look at the vehicle they pulled over and recovered a Calvin Klein bag, a brown and pink wallet, and the robbery victim’s ID, Wojnicki said. She allegedly identified all of the items, and the AirPods Williams allegedly carried as property that the robbers took.
Investigators showed Williams a surveillance image from the gas station, and he identified himself as the person wearing a blue hoodie with white lettering, Wojnicki said.
But when cops showed him a surveillance image of a man wearing a blue hoodie with white lettering at the robbery scene, Williams admitted that it was the same clothing, “but somebody else must be wearing his clothes,” Wojnicki alleged.
Judge John Lyke ordered Williams held in lieu of $150,000 bail on the prosecutors’ charge of aggravated robbery. Williams must post 10% of that amount to get out of jail on electronic monitoring under the judge’s order.