CHICAGO — Prosecutors say a man with four juvenile robbery convictions carjacked a woman in the parking lot of a Little Village supermarket while on electronic monitoring this week. Chicago police later used his ankle monitor’s GPS data as evidence against him in the hijacking case.
During a bail hearing for 20-year-old Khalil Ingram on Friday, prosecutor Victor Aberdeen said the 29-year-old woman pulled into a parking lot in the 2500 block of West Cermak to talk with her mother on the phone around 7:22 a.m. Thursday.
As she talked, Ingram opened her door and ordered her out of the car, twice asking for her purse, Aberdeen said. The woman froze and refused to hand over her bag, so Ingram drove away with just her vehicle and its contents.
Among the contents were the woman’s AirPods, which Chicago police pinged to track down the car within hours, Aberdeen said. When they found it, Ingram was allegedly using the car with his electronic monitoring bracelet firmly attached to his leg. He was wearing the monitor while on bail for a pending felony gun charge.
Chicago police detectives learned that the AirPods and Ingram’s ankle monitor pinged along the same path during and after the hijacking, Aberdeen said.
Prosecutors charged Ingram with vehicular hijacking. Aberdeen told Judge Ankur Srivastava that Ingram has seven juvenile adjudications of delinquency and is currently on juvenile parole for a 2021 vehicular hijacking case. He was adjudicated delinquent for other robberies in 2019 and twice in 2018.
During Friday’s hearing, Thomas Stopka, Ingram’s defense attorney, argued that there was “no probable cause for the hijacking charge” because Ingram did not use a weapon or threaten to use force against the woman.
“That argument’s respectfully denied,” Srivastava countered after noting that Ingram is accused of opening the woman’s car door without permission and asking for her purse.
He held Ingram without bail for violating bond in the pending gun case. Separately, he said Ingram must post a $15,000 bail deposit in the hijacking case to be released on electronic monitoring.