A 17-year-old girl is charged with trying to kill a man when she allegedly shot him during a carjacking earlier this month in the Park Manor neighborhood.
Azariah Jackson was ordered held without bail during a hearing Wednesday at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, where she appeared on charges of attempted murder and aggravated battery with a firearm, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office said.
Jackson shot the 59-year-old man during a struggle for the .25-caibler handgun she pointed at him after demanding he give her his vehicle, Assistant State’s Attorney David Shin said.
About 5:45 p.m. Aug. 2, Jackson approached the man as he sat in his vehicle in the 7400 block of South Evans and asked him for a ride, Shin and Chicago police said. The man told Jackson he wouldn’t give her a ride and then called his wife to ask her to move her vehicle to make room for him to park.
He was waiting for his wife when Jackson approached again, this time with an unidentified co-offender, and Jackson pulled out the handgun, Shin said. After getting out of his vehicle, the man reached for the weapon, but instead grabbed Jackson’s wrist. During a struggle over the weapon, the co-offender got into the man’s vehicle.
The man was turning to look at the co-offender when Jackson shot him in the back, Shin said. The bullet punctured one of the man’s lungs, fractured a vertebrae and lodged inside his body.
Police said he was taken to University of Chicago Medical Center and stabilized.
Jackson kicked the man’s legs out of the way and then drove off with the co-offender, Shin said. A .25-caliber shell casing was found at the scene.
Three days later, Markham police officers investigating a report of a suspicious vehicle found the man’s stolen vehicle in the 16400 block of South Ashland in the south suburb, Shin said.
The person who called police to report the suspicious vehicle recorded video of people that were inside it, Shin said. Jackson was returning to the vehicle when she saw the officers and ran. She was taken into custody and identified by the witness as one of the people that was recorded in the vehicle.
Shin said officers found a .25-caliber handgun and the keys to the man’s vehicle on Jackson.
Jackson is a ward of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and headed into her junior year of high school, her court-appointed public defender said Wednesday. Jackson told Judge Stephanie Miller that she had a private attorney that was being provided to her by the family services agency, but she did not know the attorney’s last name.
Miller told Jackson that her bail could be revisited on Friday once she had an opportunity to identify her lawyer.
