There are four main causes of vehicle damage, including weather conditions, small fender benders, negligence, and, most destructively, high speed collisions. Of course, when a high speed car chase occurs following a carjacking or other violent crime, those situations rarely end in a fender bender.
According to ABC Chicago, Illinois State Police and Chicago Police arrested four people following a high speed chase on the Eisenhower expressway. The officers began pursing a vehicle that was reportedly carjacked in Maywood a few days earlier.
Luckily the chase didn’t end with a collision with another vehicle. The stolen Honda Civic exited the Eisenhower expressway at Ashland Avenue and crashed through a fence, subsequently sliding down an embankment and striking the shoulder of the expressway.
The victim of the car jacking, who did not want to be identified, said that she and her aunt were returning home around midnight in late March when two men approached her vehicle at gunpoint and forced them out. Additionally, her car, a white Toyota Camry, matched the description of another vehicle that was involved in a carjacking and armed robbery inside a parking garage.
Police said that a 68-year-old woman was inside her car, which was parked in the Oakbrook Mall’s parking garage, when a white Toyota Camry pulled up behind her and a man got out of the vehicle, approached her car door, pointed a gun at her, and forced her out of the vehicle, a Honda Civic.
As the criminal was driving away in her vehicle, the woman reached in the back seat to acquire her purse, but police say the man exited the vehicle, chased her down, stole the purse, and then drove off in the stolen car.
In many areas, in order to prevent crimes like this from happening, the law requires parking garages to have lighting on 24 hours a day.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Darnell Anderson, 26, of the 4800 block of West Monroe Street, was arrested and held on a $1 million bond for the carjacking at gunpoint inside the parking garage.
Anderson is being charged with aggravated vehicular hijacking with a gun, as well as armed robbery.
The Toyota that was involved in the high speed chase had four men inside the car, and all four fled the vehicle on foot after the crash and were all caught. Though Anderson was not inside the Toyota at the time of the incident (all four were juveniles), Sgt. Ben Kadolph of the Oak Brook Police Department stats that he has connections to them.
The Honda that Anderson stole at gunpoint was later found “banged up” on the West Side of Chicago.
If convicted, Anderson could face a sentence of up to 45 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections. His arraignment is scheduled for April 23.
The second suspect involved in the Honda carjacking is still at large.
