A career criminal was sentenced Tuesday to 21 years in prison for shooting a CTA passenger in the back during a robbery at the UIC-Halsted station in February 2020. Patrick Waldon, 32, pleaded guilty to one count of armed robbery with a firearm and must serve 85% of the sentence handed to him by Judge Domenica Stephenson, according to court records.
At the time of the shooting and robbery, Waldon was on parole after serving half of a 12-year sentence he received for a 2012 home invasion that he committed while on parole for a 2010 robbery.
Prosecutors said he followed a 30-year-old man onto a Blue Line train at the Jackson station around 10:30 a.m. and then began talking to the victim as the train headed out of the Loop.
He ordered the man to turn over his backpack, but the victim tried to exit at the UIC-Halsted stop instead. Prosecutors said Waldon stepped behind him, put the gun to his back, and fired one shot into the victim’s back. He then took the man’s backpack and left the station.
Chicago police released surveillance images of the robber, and detectives quickly received several tips that identified Waldon as the offender, CPD’s chief of detectives, Brendan Deenihan, said as authorities announced charges in the case.
Waldon had been “preying on the people of Chicago for years,” said Charlie Beck, who was Interim Supt. of the Chicago Police Department at the time.
Prosecutors dropped multiple counts of attempted murder as well as armed robbery and armed habitual criminal charges in their plea deal with Waldon, according to court records.
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