CHICAGO — A judge has handed a 16-year sentence to a man who carjacked a woman at gunpoint while on bail for another armed carjacking charge and on probation for yet another gun case.
Nicolas Ramirez, 22, pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicular hijacking with a weapon and a separate armed robbery before Judge Mary Anna Planey on Friday. She gave him concurrent 16-year sentences on each charge.
But let’s start at the beginning. In May 2022, Ramirez pleaded guilty to felony firearm possession in exchange for a sentence of 50 hours of community service and two years of “first-time weapons offender probation” from Judge Stanley Sacks.
Just three months later, Ramirez pulled out a gun and carjacked a driver in Cicero, prosecutors say. As the driver got out of his car, Ramirez pistol-whipped him and ordered him to run or he’d risk being shot, prosecutors claimed. The Cicero carjacking charges are still pending.
A little while later, Ramirez allegedly jumped out of the freshly hijacked car and tried to rob someone else. When that victim didn’t comply, Ramirez hit them in the face with a gun and fled, according to prosecutors.
Unable to afford bail in those cases, Ramirez stayed in jail for a couple of months until Judge Geary Kull slashed his bond deposit to $2,500 and sent him home on an ankle monitor. A couple of months later, Kull removed the ankle monitor, too.
And then Ramirez stopped showing up for court. Within two weeks, Ramirez was allegedly back in the carjacking business.
At 2:30 p.m. on July 11, 2023, Ramirez threatened to kill a 57-year-old woman while carjacking her at gunpoint in the 2500 block of South Springfield, prosecutors said. Ramirez allegedly knocked on the woman’s driver’s window and pulled a gun from the back of his waistband.
“Get out, m*****f*****, or I’ll kill you,” he ordered.
She complied and immediately called 911. Chicago cops intercepted the car less than five minutes later and trapped it between a bunch of construction equipment and a swarm of squad cars.
Ramirez is due in court again this week to see Judge Geary Kull about the ongoing Cicero carjacking case.
