Charges in four 7-Eleven robberies
21-year-old woman accused in morning ‘crime spree’
A woman was charged with two robberies of convenience stores downtown and two on the Northwest Side on Thursday morning during a “crime spree,” prosecutors said.
Jessica Short, 21, faces two counts of aggravated robbery and two counts of robbery after the stores were targeted during a spree that lasted less than an hour Thursday morning, Chicago police said.
Short, who allegedly committed the robberies with an uncharged accomplice, was arrested about 11:20 p.m. Thursday in the first block of South Halsted Street after allegedly driving a Ford SUV tied to the four robberies. She has never been issued a driver’s license and also was cited for that, prosecutors said.
The spree began about
7:50 a.m. Thursday with a robbery in the 300 block of North LaSalle Street in the River North neighborhood that was followed by another robbery at 8:10 a.m. in the 500 block of West Lake Street in West Loop Gate.
About a half-hour later, aggravated robberies of additional 7-Elevens happened about 8:30 a.m. in the 3600 block of West Belmont Avenue in Avondale and at 8:43 a.m. in the 3000 block of North Pulaski Road in the Belmont Gardens neighborhood, police said.
Judge Susana Ortiz held Short, of Belvidere, about 75 miles from Chicago, on $50,000 bond during a hearing Saturday afternoon that was livestreamed on YouTube.
Assistant Public Defender Courtney Smallwood said Short was out on bond for an unrelated misdemeanor battery case when the robberies happened.
Short began living in Cook County about eight years ago and had spent time in the care of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
She lives with her sister and has two children, Smallwood said, adding Short did not attend high school and is unemployed currently.
Ortiz said she considered that at least one of the robberies involved the threat of violence.
A 7-Eleven staffer was “forced” into the back area, Ortiz said. “That certainly would have caused some people to feel doom or a sense of terror” as to what would happen, Ortiz said.