2 men sought in trio of Lincoln Park, Lake View armed vehicle thefts

The North Side neighborhoods of Lake View and Lincoln Park encountered a string of armed vehicular hijackings and thefts around midnight Thursday that escalated into a police chase, one of the stolen cars crashing in the South Side and two suspects escaping.

The trio of robberies began at 11:55 p.m. Wednesday near Lake View’s intersection of Lincoln, Belmont and Ashland Avenues, according to Chicago police. A 25-year-old woman was walking on the sidewalk in the 1600 block of West Barry Avenue when two armed men confronted her and announced they were going to rob her.

She handed over her purse, including the keys to a red Toyota Corolla, police said. They then jumped into her car and took off.

The carjackers likely drove south down Lincoln toward Lincoln Park’s Sheffield Neighbors neighborhood, because at 12:25 a.m., two men walked up to a 20-year-old man delivering food in the 800 block of West Dickens Avenue and pointed a handgun at him, police said.

They nabbed the 20-year-old’s 2011 black Toyota Camry sedan and also took his iPhone, drivers license and $10, police said.

About five minutes later, a 26-year-old woman was sitting inside a white Ford Fusion vehicle parked in the 800 block of West Willow Street, about two blocks south of the deliveryman, when a man knocked on the rear door and implied he was armed by mimicking pulling a gun trigger with his hand, police said.

He told her to leave the vehicle right as a second man dragged her out of it, police said. The two took off in the Ford.

Officers soon located the first woman’s red Corolla, which was closely following the other woman’s Ford, police said. They chased the Corolla across the city until it crashed in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side.

The men escaped on foot, police said, and detectives believe there was a probable connection among all three thefts.

After securing the Corolla in the 400 block of East Marquette Road, officers soon found the white Ford parked close-by, sitting near the intersection of 69th Street and Anthony Avenue next to the Chicago Skyway in the Park Manor neighborhood, police said. Both vehicles were processed as evidence.

Area Central detectives were investigating.