Armed hijackers targeted a family in Streeterville, a Grubhub driver in West Town, and a woman who was leaving work in the South Loop on Wednesday evening, according to separate CPD reports.
In addition to those, two men armed with a handgun stole two cars from a West Loop restaurant’s valet stand, but police initially classified that incident as an armed robbery instead of a carjacking.
The Streeterville hijacking was reported around 5:45 p.m. in the 700 block of North St. Clair, according to a Northwestern University Police Department statement.
A 22-year-old man was dropping off family members when three offenders approached them and one of the suspects displayed a handgun, according to information from CPD and Northwestern police.
The gunman ordered the man away from his orange Dodge Charger and two offenders drove it east on Superior Street. A third offender ran south on St. Clair Street and then west on Huron Street, Northwestern police said.
The victim and his family sought help at Lurie Children’s Hospital. No description of the suspects was available.
Then, around 8:40 p.m., two carjackers put a gun to the head of a Grubhub driver who was making a delivery in the 2000 block of West Superior in West Town.
The victim told police the hijackers were two Black men who wore hoodies with bandanas over their faces. They were last seen leaving the area in his red 2015 Jeep Cherokee.
Later, an armed man robbed and carjacked a woman as she left work at Target, 1154 South Clark in the South Loop. The victim was on the third floor of the store’s parking garage when the offender confronted her with a handgun around 11:20 p.m.
She described the robber as a Black male in his 20s or 30s who wore a black hoodie with some pink accents. He drove away with the woman’s black Nissan and was followed by a black Camry that an accomplice may have driven.
Wednesday’s hijacking is at least the second to be reported in the Target store’s parking garage this year. A 55-year-old woman was injured when a group of carjackers pushed her to the ground and took her vehicle inside the garage on April 10.
The woman was on the ground floor of the garage when three young males grabbed the keys from her hand. She tried to fight back, the offenders pushed her to the ground, dislocating her shoulder and causing scrapes to her back, according to police.
The entire attack was recorded by Target’s surveillance camera system, but police have not announced any arrests.
Chicago police took reports for 139 hijacking cases during the first three weeks of December. That compares to 98 during the same period last year and 39 in 2019.