An 18-year-old and two juveniles were arrested for allegedly stealing a car from a Chicago Tribune reporter, with the oldest teen facing felony carjacking charges.
Noriyhea Evans, who was charged as an adult, was ordered held in lieu of $20,000 bail on Thursday by Cook County Judge Sophia Atcherson at a hearing at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse.
The judge’s decision drew frowns from Evans’ mother and a handful of other relatives who sat in the courtroom gallery.
The $2,000 Evans would have to post to be released was more than his relatives said they could afford to pay, but Atcherson said the carjacking, which took place just blocks from the Deering police station, was “brazen.”
Evans and two other teens pulled into the parking lot of a Bridgeport Dunkin’ Donuts around 2 a.m. Monday, backing into the space next the 29-year-old Tribune reporter’s Chevrolet Malibu, Assistant State’s Attorney Erin Antonietti said.
Evans and a 16-year-old allegedly got out of a Nissan Rogue – which had been reported stolen from a woman in her 70s who had left the car running as she went to pay for gas at a Bronzeville station – and walked to opposite sides of the reporter’s car.
Evans rapped on the driver’s window, and he and the other teenager ordered the woman out of the car, Antonietti said. After she ran into the doughnut shop, those two suspects fled off in the Malibu, tossing the reporter’s laptop computer out the window, Antonietti said. The third suspect, 16, followed in the Nissan, Antonietti said.
The Malibu was a Tribune company car, and the reporter, who told police neither of the teens showed a weapon during the robbery, was unhurt, a Tribune breaking news editor told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Tuesday, police spotted the Evans and the two 16-year-olds inside the Malibu as it drove the wrong way down the 4600 block of North Ravenswood Avenue, authorities said.
When the officers took a a U-turn to head back toward the Malibu, the teens drove off. The teens abandoned the car a block away the parking lot of a grocery store in the 1800 block of West Lawrence Avenue, but a bystander pointed pursuing officers to the direction the trio had run, authorities said.
Police found all three teens hiding under a staircase at the rear of a house in the 1800 block of West Argyle Street. Evans’ cell phone was found inside the Malibu, Antonietti said. Evans initially gave police a false name, but admitted the carjacking and gave a “reverse identification” of the Tribune reporter, Antonietti said.
Evans is a senior at Phillips Academy High School in Bronzeville, and has no prior criminal record as an adult or a juvenile.
The two teens with him were arrested for misdemeanor counts of criminal trespass to a vehicle. They were charged as juveniles.
