A 15-year-old Chicago resident, arrested by Forest Park police after being chased away by an elderly woman during a failed home invasion last Thursday, also confessed to two recent carjackings.

An elderly woman told police that on the afternoon of May 18 she looked up from her kitchen table at her home on the 600 block of Harlem to find a young man standing over her, holding a large kitchen knife. He had come to her door asking if her car was for sale about 10 minutes earlier.

He told the woman to “give me the keys to your car,” but was in for quite a surprise, as the woman picked up the scissors that were on the table next to her and told him, “You won’t hurt me.” The assailant then fled from the woman’s home.

“She was a brave old lady,” said Detective Pete Morrissette of the Forest Park Police Department.

The youth was apprehended by Forest Park and Oak Park patrol units as he attempted to board an el train at the Desplaines Avenue Blue Line station. The victim accompanied police to identify the suspect as the person who had attempted to rob her.

In addition to a credit card and a bundle of cash taken from the elderly woman’s wallet, police found car keys in the youth’s possession linking him to the two recent carjackings.

The first of these incidents occurred May 11 in an alley near Madison Street and Burkhardt Court. A man reported that as he drove, a man entered his 1985 Oldsmobile and pulled out a large black handgun, demanding his money and car. The car was found later that day on the 7300 block of Harrison Street with its keys removed, and the weapon, which was actually a BB gun, on the driver’s seat covered by a towel.

Morrissette said the youth told police that he became scared when he heard police sirens approaching and abandoned the car.

The second carjacking occurred on the afternoon of May 16 at the intersection of Desplaines Avenue and Jackson Boulevard. The victim told police that as she returned to her car from the library, a man entered her car and pulled out a 10-inch kitchen knife, demanding her car keys.

According to a police report, the victim asked her assailant, “Why are you doing this?” to which he responded, “I have to do this or I’m going to die. I have to be back at 7:30 p.m. or they’re going to kill me.”

That car, a Ford Crown Victoria, was recovered the following day at the Independence Boulevard exit of the I-290 Expressway.

“He told me he had engine trouble … just his luck,” said Morrissette.

The youth is being held at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center on charges of home invasion, three counts of armed robbery, and two counts of aggravated vehicular hijacking.

Morrissette said that no motive aside from “just greed” had been found for the crimes.