Man, 74, dies months after being hit by vehicle during carjacking

A 74-year-old man died more than three months after a carjacker hit him with his own vehicle in the Chatham neighborhood on the South Side.

At 4:19 p.m. on Sept. 26, 2017, a man got into a vehicle that Shawn Sterling had been driving in the 8600 block of South State, according to Chicago Police and the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.

The suspect, a man between 19 and 29 years old, started to drive away when Sterling tried to pull him out of the vehicle, authorities said. The suspect pushed Sterling, causing him to fall to the pavement. The then suspect sped off, crashed the vehicle into two utility poles and ran away.

Sterling, who lived in the South Chicago neighborhood, was pronounced dead at Holy Cross Hospital at 1:23 a.m. on Jan. 11, police and the medical examiner’s office said. An autopsy at the time did not initially rule on his cause of death.

Investigators have since determined that Sterling died from complications of multiple injuries caused by a motor vehicle striking a pedestrian during a carjacking, with heart disease contributing, the medical examiner’s office said Tuesday. His death was ruled a homicide.