An 18-year-old woman was carjacked last night as she sat in her car on a Lincoln Park street lined with some of the city’s priciest homes.
Police said she was on the 1900 block of North Orchard when a male climbed into the front passenger seat of her gray Lexus RX350 around 8 p.m. The offender told the woman to get out and to leave the key fob behind, according to a CPD statement. She complied, and the carjacker, described only as a young male, drove away with her SUV.
There were 19 carjackings reported in Lincoln Park last year, just one more than in 2020. All but five of last year’s hijackings occurred in the last four months of the year.
Lincoln Park had only eight hijackings in 2019.
Ald. Michele Smith (43rd) has been trying to counter a recent spike in armed robberies and carjackings in the area by organizing nighttime walks. At one point, she claimed to have organized a walk on every block that had experienced a recent armed robbery.
Last month, Smith encouraged her constituents to carry whistles as a crime-fighting measure.
“The WhistleStop program follows these rules,” Smith wrote in her December 22 email. “If you find yourself in a suspicious situation or witness a crime, blow your whistle. If you hear a whistle, call the police, then move toward the source while blowing your own whistle.”
“It allows people to come to the victim’s aid, forces the offender to flee, and helps the police pinpoint the location of the crime,” Smith claimed.
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