Chicago — A man has been sentenced to seven years in prison for violently carjacking a Lakeview woman while wearing a court-ordered GPS tracker for a pending case in November 2021.
Judge Peggy Chiampas sentenced Jmeere Murray-Lennan after he pleaded guilty to one count of vehicular hijacking. Prosecutors dropped five other felonies in their deal with Murray-Lennan, including robbery, burglary, and unlawful restraint, court records show.
On November 4, 2021, Murray-Lennan was wearing a GPS ankle monitor for a pending domestic battery case when he and another man confronted a woman as she parked her car in her garage in the 1300 block of West Fletcher.
The woman tried to reason with the two men as they demanded her keys, but Murray-Lennan walked behind the woman, placed a gloved hand over her mouth, and threw her to the ground, prosecutors said last year. He put his leg on her neck and face area, then threatened to kill her as the other man took her wallet, keys, earbuds, and phone.
His accomplice started her car, and Murray-Lennan allegedly climbed into the passenger seat. They drove away, striking a neighbor’s iron fence as they fled. A surveillance camera recorded portions of the hijacking.
About four hours later, a CPD license plate reader located the car, and cops moved in. The driver sped away from police but eventually drove onto a sidewalk and slammed into a railing near Michigan Avenue and Roosevelt Road. The vehicle, which began smoking, was totaled.
Murray-Lennan was the driver at the time of the crash, and no one else was in the vehicle, prosecutors said. He allegedly had the car’s key fob and the woman’s earpods in his possession. The woman’s wallet and phone were still in the car.
Prosecutors said that when investigators looked at Murray-Lennan’s GPS tracker data, they found that his device pinged at the crime scene at the time of the hijacking.
This is Murray-Lennan’s first adult conviction, but he was adjudicated delinquent as a juvenile for possession of a stolen motor vehicle in 2017; residential burglary in 2017; unlawful possession of a handgun in 2018; and he had a pending juvenile robbery case at the time of the Lakeview carjacking, prosecutors said.
Murray-Lennan’s sentence will be reduced by 50% for good behavior, and he received 552 days credit for time spent in jail before pleading guilty, according to court records. It’s unclear how he received 1½ years of credit by spending less than a year in jail.
He is scheduled to be paroled on September 11, 2024.
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