A man who carjacked a driver in the Loop earlier this year while on pretrial release for two other felony cases has been sentenced to six years in prison. Rodney Henderson, 36, committed the carjacking on January 6 in the 1100 block of South Wabash.
The victim, who was leaving work around 7 a.m., drove out of a garage, turned on his hazard lights, and ran inside to hand off the garage key to the next shift. When he returned to his car, Henderson was in the driver’s seat and threatened him, saying, “Give me the keys, or I’ll shoot you.” The victim recognized Henderson as someone who had struck up a conversation with him earlier and ran away with the keys, but Henderson chased him down and took the keys from him.
Henderson then got into the victim’s 2015 Volkswagen Passat and sped away, only to crash shortly after. Chicago police tracked Henderson’s escape route with surveillance cameras and arrested him on a Green Line train at Cermak-McCormick Place.
Henderson pleaded guilty to vehicular hijacking and received a six-year sentence from Judge Ursula Walowski. However, he still faces additional time behind bars due to two suburban cases that were pending at the time of the hijacking. In those cases, Henderson is accused of possessing a loaded gun in a duffle bag in the Orland Square parking lot after being caught shoplifting last summer, as well as having stolen plates on his car.
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