[CHICAGO.SUNTIMES] Alyssa Blanchard was so traumatized after being carjacked at gunpoint last week outside her Calumet Heights home that she's now scared to go outside.
reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown
...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel...police say a group of children, ages 10 to 17, carjacked Blanchard and at least 15 other people since late June — wreaking havoc on Blanchard’s generally peaceful South Side neighborhood.
Police said shots were fired by the suspects in two of the carjackings, but no one was hit.
"I’m scared to use my garage. I don’t feel safe in my neighborhood," said Blanchard, an elementary school teacher at Chicago Public Schools.
What’s especially painful for Blanchard was seeing her stolen BMW used the next day to carjack a woman in the parking lot of Trinity Hospital, a few blocks from her home, she said.
"I don’t want to have to tell my kid about how some young woman was killed or shot with kids using my vehicle. It was traumatizing," Blanchard, 44, said.
Blanchard was carjacked July 14 while returning home in the early evening. As she pulled into her alley garage on South Kingston Avenue, she noticed a vehicle and three or four children come toward her.
Two children armed with handguns pointed them to her head and ordered her out of her BMW, she said. One child looked as young as 11, she said.
"It was so instantaneous ... I was just scared for my life. I thought, ’this is it,’" she said.
They took her purse, which had about $300 inside, and jumped inside her BMW and rode off, she said.
Blanchard said the children used her BMW the next day to carjack a woman in the parking lot of Trinity Hospital. In that carjacking, a 21-year-old was seated in her Lexus when four or five teens exited a BMW, with two of them confronting her with guns, police said.
Two teens forced her to the ground outside the car, but she grabbed onto a door handle and held on until the teens drove off, police said. The woman was treated for a foot injury.
Blanchard said police recovered her BMW, which had been crashed a couple days after the carjacking.
Blanchard said she was dismayed to see such young children involved in this type of crime.
"I teach this age group and I can’t believe they would do this," she said.
Police published a community alert Sunday evening warning of 14 other carjackings tied to the children. According to the alert, the children are committing the carjackings at a greater frequency, with six carjackings reported just last Saturday: