A Northwest Side man was arrested for stealing $5,000-worth of cigarettes in west suburban Riverside last week.
Jesus A. Sanchez, 34, was arrested on Oct. 19 and has been charged with one count of theft, a Class 2 felony, according to a statement from Riverside police.
On Oct. 16, Sanchez hopped into a delivery truck that was parked on East Quincy Street near Harlem Avenue in Riverside and made off with boxes of cigarettes. While he was running to his getaway car, a bystander spotted him, yelled out and chased him, police said.
Sanchez dropped the boxes before getting into the car, which then sped away, but not before the bystander was able to snap a picture of the car’s license plate and report the incident to police.
When police traced the plates to a different Chicago resident, they realized Sanchez was changing his car’s plates, police said. He managed to evade arrest for a weekend using the false license plates.
Police eventually tracked the actual car used in the theft to Sanchez’s residence in the 5100 block of West Drummond Place.
He told investigators he was able to obtain the multiple license plates from currency exchanges around Chicago that did not ask for identification, according to the police statement.
Sanchez is being investigated for several other cigarette thefts throughout the western suburbs. Court information was not immediately available.
