Two suspects seen on camera walking down a street in broad daylight, guns drawn, to rob a mother and her young daughter may be responsible for more than a dozen armed robberies in Chicago and Indiana, including the shooting of a 73-year-old man on the Southwest Side this week, authorities said.
Police believe the two robbers, part of a crew that may number as many as five, are likely linked to at least 10 robberies within a 2-mile radius on the Southwest Side and at least three armed robberies in Indiana since last week.
Another nine robberies in the neighborhoods of Brighton Park, Back of the Yards and Gage Park since last Friday show a similar pattern, with similar descriptions of four suspects.
Alerts have been sent to the Deering and Chicago Lawn police districts, which cover the Chicago neighborhoods, and detectives from the city have been in touch with authorities in Hammond, Ind.
“It looks like the same guys,” said Hammond police Lt. Steve Kellogg. “They are hitting early in the morning, and they seem to be looking for vulnerable targets.”
The robbers are described as being 14 to 25 years old. In many of the cases, they drive up in an SUV and rob people on the street at gunpoint, according to Chicago police alerts.
“They’re looking for things they can grab quickly, either a cellphone or a purse,” Kellogg said. “They’re running up, pointing a gun and snatching what they can really quickly and then running.”
There had been no reports of anyone seriously injured until Thursday morning, when the 73-year-old man was shot in the abdomen around 6:30 a.m. while walking in the 6100 block of South Kenneth Avenue near his Southwest Side home, police said.
Police said a black SUV pulled up and two people got out and announced a robbery, police said. The man was shot after he refused to hand over his wallet, keys and phone, police said. He was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where his condition was stabilized.
Surveillance video from across the street shows the man slowly walking down the sidewalk. A black Jeep, with black rims, passes him going the other way and brakes suddenly. Two people in hoodies jump out and run to the man, who by this time is off-camera.
The Jeep, its back passenger door still open, backs up and stops, almost entirely out of camera range. In less than a minute, the two jump back into the Jeep and it speeds off.
The camera also catches a neighbor, Adrian Sanchez, running across the street in bare feet to help the man.
“The first thing I heard was my mom screaming my name. ‘Adrian, wake up, call the police, someone just got shot,’ ” Sanchez said. “At first I thought it had something to do with my brothers.”
He looked out, saw the man and ran to him. “Thankfully, I had my phone with me and so I dialed right away once I sprinted. He was in shock. He was just shivering, he was sweating, he was bleeding out.”
Sanchez said he told him in Spanish to relax. “Stay clam. Everything’s going to be fine, we’re all here. He wanted to speak and I told him not to say a word.”
Paramedics arrived and the man was talking as he was brought into the ambulance.
Sanchez said there was a shooting around the corner last year, but, “I never seen this happen, especially this close to me.”
The shooting happened in front of Carolina Rosado’s house. She was sleeping in her first-floor bedroom when she awoke to the sound of gunfire and the loud revving of an engine.
“I heard three gunshots and ran out of my bedroom and looked out my front window,” said Rosado, 38.
Someone screamed, “Call 911!” and she went back into her bedroom, grabbed her phone and went outside, where she saw a man was sitting up on a sidewalk. He was conscious and speaking in Spanish to bystanders and first responders.
Rosado has lived in her home for the last two years with her two children and two young nieces, all of whom were sleeping at the time.
“What if it went through window? They could have been shot!” she said.
Rosado has heard gunshots in the area before and remembers a recent home invasion nearby as well as the shooting of a youngster.
“I’m thinking of moving, of course,” she said. “It’s the first thing on your mind when you have kids. I have a 12- and 13-year-old and two nieces — 10 and 7.”
According to an alert in the Chicago Lawn police district, nine robberies have been committed by the same four to five people since Friday, not including the attack on the 73-year-old. Two of the suspects are 14 to 16 years old, around 5-foot-6 and around 130 pounds; two other suspects are 16 to 25 years old, 5-foot-7 to 5-foot-9 and weigh 145 to 160 pounds; the fifth is described only as 5-foot-10 and weighing 240 pounds. All of them are black.
The alert in the neighboring Deering police district also lists nine robberies since Friday. It lists four suspects and describes them as black males, 16 to 20 years old, around 5-foot-10 and weighing about 160 pounds. They were seen driving a gray or white SUV.
In Hammond, police are looking for three men suspected of committing at least three armed robberies early last Friday, about an hour after the robberies in the Chicago Lawn and Deering districts.
In the first robbery, two men wearing hoodies attempted to rob an 85-year-old man and, minutes later, a 67-year-old man, Hammond police said.
Shortly afterward, the suspects robbed a 33-year-old woman walking with her 11-year-old daughter in the 4100 block of Wabash Avenue, police said. In a video of that robbery, a car stops after passing the two and two gunman jump out and cross the street.
They raise their arms, each holding guns, as they approach the two from behind in broad daylight.
The suspects were described as black males ages 16 to 24. They are 5-foot-10 to 6 feet tall with medium builds. One suspect was wearing a white hooded sweatshirt and the other a blue hooded sweatshirt.
Kellogg, with the Hammond police, urged people to use caution.
“It’s a matter of the right person putting up enough of a fuss to them,” Kellogg said. “We all know how dangerous these guys are flailing these guns around.”
