Two adults and a juvenile are charged with carjacking a woman at gunpoint outside a Lincoln Park store earlier this year. Chicago police and state troopers arrested the trio on the night of the carjacking, but prosecutors declined to file charges until more investigative work was done, according to statements made during a bail hearing Wednesday.
On the evening of February 27, a 56-year-old woman parked her BMW on the Menard’s lot at 2601 North Clybourn and went into the store. While she was inside, Freddrick Jackson and his girlfriend, Sareeah Hickson, hid inside covered shopping cart corals near the BMW with a 16-year-old boy and waited for her to come back out, prosecutor Lorraine Scaduto said yesterday.
When the woman returned to her car, the juvenile allegedly pointed a handgun at her face and demanded her keys. The woman pushed the gun away and yelled for help. A man and his child came over to assist, but they backed off when the 16-year-old pointed the gun at them, Scaduto continued.
The woman again pushed the gun away from her face, but this time she dropped her key fob and the juvenile picked it up, according to Scaduto. The teen jumped into the BMW’s driver’s seat as Jackson and Hickson climbed into the two passenger-side doors.
The store’s surveillance cameras recorded much of the activity.
State troopers intercepted the hijacked car about 20 minutes later on the Dan Ryan Expressway and the three occupants bailed out of the vehicle after it became stuck in traffic in a shopping mall parking lot, Scaduto said. Officers apprehended them.
Police also found a loaded handgun on the ground behind the stolen car, said Scaduto.
During interviews with police, Hickson allegedly told investigators that the group took a train to the North Side and admitted to acting as a lookout, but she didn’t know what she was looking out for.
Jackson, however, told police that he knew the juvenile was going to carjack the woman and that he and Hickson were supposed to keep an eye out for police, Scaduto alleged.
Prosecutors rejected felony charges in February because the store’s surveillance video was not available, according to a law enforcement source. Instead, Jackson and Hickson were charged with misdemeanor resisting and released on their own recognizance two days after the hijacking, according to CPD records.
Detectives later obtained the store’s video and warrants were issued for Jackson, Hickson, and the juvenile.
Scaduto said Jackson was adjudicated delinquent of four felonies as a juvenile, including robberies on the CTA Red Line and the Orange Line in 2020. He was convicted of a third robbery from the same year and burglary to auto in 2021, she added.
Hickson, 20, and Jackson, 18, are now charged with aggravated vehicular hijacking.
Jackson’s public defender said they live together and have a child on the way.
Judge Barbara Dawkins set bail for Jackson at $150,000 on Wednesday. She ordered him to go onto electronic monitoring if he can post the requisite 10% deposit bond.
Hickson appeared before Judge Kelly McCarthy on Tuesday. McCarthy held her on the arrest warrant’s full bond amount of $400,000.