Regardless of years of police warnings concerning the risks of assembly strangers to purchase or promote objects discovered on-line, criminals proceed to make use of social media markets to lure victims into theft traps. This week, a kind of robbers, caught final summer season as a result of Chicago police had been surveilling the realm with a drone, was despatched to jail — on his twenty fourth birthday.
All of it went down on an August afternoon final 12 months within the 2900 block of West Warren Boulevard, a website the place CPD had warned the general public that on-line market rip-offs had been happening. After CPD issued the neighborhood alert in June 2024, the variety of robberies ballooned over the summer season, prompting investigators to faucet into town’s rising fleet of surveillance drones.
As a SWAT group’s drone quietly regarded on from above, a 24-year-old Braidwood man rolled onto the road to purchase a motorized grime bike that he noticed marketed on Fb Market. That’s the identical state of affairs CPD talked about was getting used to draw victims to the theft entice.
Lajuan Gaines, 22, of Carpentersville, allegedly pretended to be the vendor, the report stated, whereas Davontae Harvey stood in a neighboring yard “making furtive actions” with a gun that turned out to be faux. Earlier than they might rob the sufferer, Chicago cops moved in and arrested them each, prosecutors stated.
Prosecutors alleged that Gaines had been concerned in a number of comparable armed robberies over the summer season, along with the try that police foiled. They stated he pistol-whipped and threatened victims, who had been all males, and took their money and telephones. He continues to battle the allegations.
Prosecutors solely charged Harvey with the tried theft that police monitored from overhead. They stated CPD’s drone allowed cops to observe him as he ran from the realm and adjusted his sweatshirt below a staircase. It additionally allowed CPD to point out that there was no grime bike within the space for anybody to purchase.
On the time of the foiled theft, each Gaines and Harvey had been on pretrial launch for felony gun costs they picked up individually over the summer season of 2024, in keeping with courtroom information.
Now, Harvey has put the gun case and the tried theft case behind him by pleading responsible to each costs.
On Wednesday, Decide Joanne Rosado sentenced him to 4 years for the theft and Decide Thomas Byrne sentenced him to 3 consecutive years on the gun cost, in keeping with courtroom information. With good habits, he’ll be launched after serving 3½ years.
Harvey arrived on the Stateville Correctional Heart reception middle on Thursday. It was his twenty fourth birthday.
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