On August 16th of last year in the city of Chicago, a 29-year-old man was carjacked at gunpoint on West 109th Street. Not long after, a 21-year-old woman was similarly removed from her vehicle further down the same street. Later that evening a 28-year-old man was carjacked at gunpoint one block over on 110th Street. Topping the night off, a 75-year-old man received the same treatment on South Vernon Avenue. This may not sound like all that unusual of a day in the Windy City because carjacking is sort of the municipal pastime for the gangs in that area. But all four of these robberies were committed by the same person. And the suspect, who was eventually apprehended, was sixteen years old. (CBS Chicago)

A 16-year-old boy has been charged with carjacking four people at gunpoint in Roseland on the same day last year.

Chicago Police said the boy was arrested by the Great Lakes Fugitive Task Force on Tuesday. He is charged in four carjackings on Aug. 16, 2021…

The boy faces three felony counts of aggravated vehicular hijacking, one felony count of attempted aggravated vehicular hijacking, and one felony count of aggravated assault.

The name of the suspect isn’t being released because of his age, but the boy in question had his first court appearance on Tuesday of this week. So all’s well that ends well, right? Justice will be served. But that assumption would be incorrect.

The suspect’s attorney managed to have the case handled in Juvenile Court. Because of Chicago’s lax criminal code, that means he will not be doing any serious time behind bars, instead being put into a “rehabilitation” program. Would it surprise you to learn that this was not his first run-in with the law?

I get that he’s sixteen so he’s technically a juvenile. But this kid was walking the streets of Chicago with an illegal firearm. He stuck a gun in the faces of four people in a single day (that we know of) and physically assaulted one of them before driving away in their vehicles. This is not some “misunderstood” youth who was trying to earn a few extra bucks to pay for his school textbooks.

Even without knowing his name, we can almost definitively conclude that this kid is already a firmly active member of one of Chicago’s gangs. As the Chicago PD will tell you, gang leaders love having underage members take care of their carjackings for them because they know they’ll be back out on the streets in short order and ready to deliver more cars. I’m sure the police confiscated his handgun when they took him in, but this is Chicago we’re talking about. He probably had a new illegal gun within an hour of leaving the police station.

It is not unheard of for juveniles to be charged as adults if the crime is serious enough. And this guy engaged in armed robbery four times in a single day. How is it that the city of Chicago can’t get its act together and realize that some teenagers are simply lost causes and they aren’t going to be “scared straight” by the criminal justice system? If they could make an example of this kid and lock him up for a decade or so, perhaps the rest of his “colleagues” out in the streets would start to get the message. Until they can manage to do something like that, Chicago will remain one of the worst places in the country to live, although the competition for that particular honor is growing increasingly fierce.