CHICAGO — Officials say an 18-year-old Chicago man robbed a sporting goods store in the Loop while he was on pretrial release with seven cases pending. Jaquan Bush managed to pick up yet another felony case after he allegedly committed the robbery in September, but before police arrested him for it last week, officials said.
During a detention hearing in the robbery case last week, prosecutors and Judge Kelly McCarthy noted that Bush was on bond for an adult charge of possessing a stolen motor vehicle plus six juvenile cases when he walked into Champs, 112 South State, on September 17.
He grabbed a Nike jacket from a display and bolted for the door, prosecutors said. A store manager recognized him from a previous theft and intervened, taking the jacket back before he got away.
Bush pulled out a knife, “lunged” at the manager, snatched the jacket from her hands, and ran away, according to prosecutors.
Police were still investigating the robbery the next day when Bush got arrested for allegedly possessing a firearm near his South Side home. Cops responding to a ShotSpotter gunfire alert and reports of a person shot said they saw Bush walking down a street with one side of his hoodie weighted down.
The officers chased him into his back yard, where he ditched the gun under the porch, police said. Once he was cuffed, Bush’s family members surrounded the cops, who called for backup because they were “outnumber[ed] and the crowd [was] being irate.” He is not accused of firing the weapon.
Judge Mary Marubio ordered him to be detained for violating pretrial release conditions in still another case that he had pending at the time of the gun incident.
In that matter, Chicago police said he bailed out of a stolen Kia Optima when officers saw him parking it in the 8900 block of South Jeffery on June 30. Prosecutors said he didn’t put the car into park before trying to run away, and it crashed into another vehicle.
CPD officers said the Kia’s steering column was stripped and a USB cord was on the driver’s floorboard. For well over a year, so-called “Kia boys” have been exploiting a design flaw in some Kia models that allows the vehicles to be operated by using a USB plug as the key.
Bush posted a $500 bail deposit to go home after court on July 1. During the hearing, prosecutors did not tell Judge Ankur Srivastava about the six juvenile cases that prosecutors now say are pending. Details about the juvenile cases are not available in public court records.
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