During a chase after a call from a woman who said she had been robbed at gunpoint, a Forest Park police officer subdued a Chicago teenage girl Friday afternoon with jolts of electricity.
When caught, Glenesha L. Currie, 17, was arrested and charged with one count of aggravated robbery, three counts of contributing to the delinquency of a child and two counts of resisting an officer.
Currie was recognized from previous encounters by one of six officers who responded to a call about an armed robbery in the 1000 block of Circle Avenue. A woman said she had been robbed by four teens who surrounded her car as she was driving in the alley between Circle and Hannah.
According to the police report, Currie asked the driver for change. When the woman told Currie she didn’t have any change, one of the teens allegedly pulled out a black gun and pointed it at the woman’s face. Currie then reached inside the car and grabbed the woman’s purse and asked for her cellphone. After one of the teens took the phone, the report said, another car pulled up and the group ran away.
One of the officers responding to the call saw Currie and another teen walking out of the alley between Thomas and Hannah in the 1000 block. As he approached the two in his patrol car, Currie began running, according to the report. The officer got out of his car and began chasing her while an auxiliary officer detained the other teen.
Currie – who is described in the police report as 100 pounds, 5-foot-3 and looking like a black male – was running north on Hannah and then west through a gangway on the 900 block of Hannah. The police report said the officer yelled to Currie that he would need to use a Taser stun gun if she didn’t stop. Currie jumped over a gate. The officer used a Taser and arrested her as she fell into the yard of a home on Hannah.
The woman identified all four teens. The three other teens were charged with robbery.
Their weapon, which turned out to be a BB gun, was found when one of the teens told police that he could show them where the gun was left. The boy led police to the CTA tracks, where against a fence they found a BB gun on the ground in the 700 block of Hannah.
Later, someone who lives on Hannah found the woman’s stolen purse on the ground at the side of his house. Missing from the purse was the woman’s wallet, which had her credit cards and ID. But an envelope with $250 in cash was left inside the purse.
Carjacking on Elgin
Around midnight Thursday, a woman who reportedly had been working late at a business on the 1100 block of Garfield Street in Oak Park was walking to her car, which was parked on the 800 block of Elgin Avenue in Forest Park. As she got to her car and was opening the door, two young men were running toward her, according to a report filed with Forest Park police. One of young men had a silver handgun and was aiming it at her, the report said.
He ran up to the woman, pointed the handgun at her head and verbally threatened to shoot her. He reached for her purse and asked where she kept her money. She told him her money was in her purse. He took the purse and asked for her keys. She gave him her keys.
The young man then walked the woman between two houses on the 800 block of Elgin and handed the gun over to his partner, telling him, according to the report, to blast her if she moved.
The first assailant then ran to the woman’s car, a 2004 purple Chrysler Concorde, put it in reverse and backed into a black 1996 Chevrolet Cavalier that was parked on Elgin. He then called to his partner, according to the report, who ran to the car after telling the woman not to move. The two sped off southbound on Elgin in the woman’s car, which the report said had no working headlights.
The woman cut through yards and ran east back to the place where she works. From her cell, she reached her boyfriend, who was at work at the same place and came out to find her. According to the police report, he called 911.
Four Forest Park police officers responded. The stolen Concorde was found on the east side of the Circle Avenue bridge; nothing was missing from the car. The keys were found on the ground behind the car, which was returned to the woman.
According to the police report, the Cavalier, the parked car that had been backed into on Elgin, was traced to an Aurora address. Its owner is wanted in Kendall County. It’s not known, the report said, if the Cavalier was dropped off by the assailants.
As of Monday afternoon, the two suspects are still at large, according to the Forest Park police.
These items were taken from the records of the Forest Park Police Department between June 30 and July 6, and represent only a portion of the incidents to which police responded. Anyone named in this report has only been charged with a crime. The cases have not been adjudicated.
-Compiled by Bob Skolnik
