Chicago — Prosecutors say a Chicago man stole two US Postal Service trucks within minutes in Chinatown and the Near South Side. Both vehicles were equipped with GPS, which helped Chicago police track him down.
Torrence Holmes, 35, is charged with two counts of possessing a stolen motor vehicle. Judge William Fahy ordered him to pay a $5,000 bail deposit to be released from custody.
The strange events began early Friday afternoon when a postal carrier who left her postal service van running while delivering mail in the 200 block of West 24th Street called police to report her truck stolen.
While Chicago cops were searching the area, another postal worker flagged them down in the first block of West 26th Street to report that her delivery van had been stolen by a man who left the first carrier’s stolen van at the scene.
Investigators tracked the second van’s GPS signal to the 6500 block of South Lowe and recovered surveillance video that showed Holmes parking the stolen van and carrying packages from the vehicle to a nearby building.
Officers arrested Holmes when he emerged from the building. One of the mail carriers identified him as the person who stole her van, and police allegedly found the first van’s keys in his possession.
CPD officers said they also found “multiple” ID cards and other items in his possession that did not belong to him.
Holmes has two felony convictions: a 2015 residential burglary and a 2006 forgery, prosecutors said. He also had an outstanding warrant for a felony narcotics case.
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