Prosecutors say two men carjacked a woman at gunpoint in the Loop while she was on break from work. But they only charged one of the men with the hijacking.
Devonte Ladd, 18, and Deshun McGee, 20, were arrested when they ran from the hijacked car following a traffic crash as state police and Chicago cops followed them, according to the allegations. A woman who ran from the vehicle escaped.
The victim, 20, was taking a break in her Chrysler 200 on the corner of Clark Street and Marble Place last Tuesday evening when McGee and Ladd allegedly walked past her car, then turned around and approached her driver’s door.
Prosecutors said that McGee displayed a gun as Ladd ordered her out of the vehicle.
“It’s not worth your life,” McGee allegedly advised when the woman initially refused to comply. He then pulled her out of the car, took her phone, and climbed behind the wheel as Ladd slid into the passenger seat, according to prosecutors.
A surveillance camera recorded the hijacking, but prosecutors said the quality was not good enough to identify the carjackers.
About four hours later, Illinois State Police troopers intercepted the hijacked car on the Dan Ryan Expressway near 75th Street. They pursued the vehicle at speeds that sometimes exceeded 100 MPH until it crashed near 45th and Western, prosecutors said.
Ladd ran from the driver’s seat as McGee and the woman bailed from the passenger side, according to a CPD report.
Police found a loaded handgun next to a fence that McGee jumped just moments before cops caught him, prosecutors said.
During an interview with detectives, Ladd allegedly admitted to taking a train downtown, where he bumped into McGee, and they decided to carjack the woman, according to prosecutors. The victim, however, could not identify the Ladd and McGee as the hijackers.
Prosecutors charged Ladd with aggravated vehicular hijacking with a firearm, armed robbery with a firearm, aggravated possession of a stolen motor vehicle, and aggravated fleeing.
Judge Barbara Dawkins held him without bail at the state’s request.
McGee is only charged with unlawful use of a weapon by a felon.
“That’s what the state’s attorney’s office has decided to charge him with,” Dawkins said, noting that she can only consider charges that are filed when setting bail. She held him in lieu of $250,00 and said he must go on electronic monitoring if he posts a 10% deposit bond.
McGee is on parole for a 2020 robbery in which he allegedly displayed the handle of a firearm in his waistband while mugging a man on the Northwest Side. A police report said he got $4 from the man.
After pleading guilty in January, he received a four-year sentence from Judge Shelley Sutker-Dermer. By law, the sentence was cut in half for good behavior. He then received credit for 712 days spent in custody, mostly on electronic monitoring, before sentencing. In the end, he arrived at and departed Stateville Correctional Center on the same day, January 28.
State officials are reviewing his parole status in light of the new allegations.
According to court records, prosecutors charged him with escaping from electronic monitoring while he was on bail for the 2020 robbery case, but they dropped the charge after he pleaded guilty to the robbery.
In February, police arrested McGee when he ran from the driver’s seat of a stolen car during a traffic stop, according to a CPD report. Those charges were dropped in March.
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