CHICAGO — A federal judge has sentenced a man to 14½ years in prison for a violent 2018 crime spree on the Gold Coast in which he shot two people, stole three cars and tried to steal two more.
Earrious Moore, 30, pleaded guilty May 29 to carjacking, attempted carjacking and firearms charges and received his sentence last week from U.S. District Judge Elaine Bucklo.
The two-hour attack began around 4 p.m. on April 26, 2018, when Moore shot his own brother in the arm during a domestic altercation and then forced four people out of a Jeep at gunpoint in the 5200 block of West Jackson.
“Get the fuck out of the car, give me everything you have and drop your cell phones,” he allegedly ordered. The group complied.
Nearly an hour later, Moore approached a victim sitting in a Jaguar in the 1100 block of North Milwaukee.
“Get the fuck out of the car,” he reportedly shouted. ‘I’ll take your car. Leave your phone behind.”
The victim complied.
Moore crashed the Jaguar a short time later and abandoned it in the 800 block of North Halsted.
Almost immediately, Moore carjacked a plainclothes Chicago police officer near Jesse White Park in the 600 block of West Chicago Avenue. He left the officer’s vehicle behind Gibson’s Steakhouse in the 1000 block of North State.
Moments later, he shot a driver near Rush and Oak during another attempted carjacking, officials said. He eventually pulled a driver out of a Jeep in front of Hugo’s Frog Bar, 1024 North Rush, and sped away.
Moore soon jumped out of the Jeep in the 1400 block of North Inner Lake Shore Drive and tried to carjack an 84-year-old man who was waiting for the light to turn green, officials said. The man saw Moore approaching him with a gun and, fearing for his life, ducked, closed his eyes, stepped on the accelerator and tried to run away, federal officials said. Moore fired a shot, hitting the man in the left rear shoulder.
Police eventually found Moore in a nearby apartment building with a firearm with an extended ammunition magazine, prosecutors said.
Moore’s attorney argued for a nine-year prison sentence, saying Moore “has had a life shaped by fractured family relationships, socio-economic challenges and difficult living conditions.”
The attorney noted that Moore has been in custody for more than six years, including the entire pandemic. At the time, the attorney wrote, Moore “had to constantly worry about COVID-19 outbreaks and deaths, and the associated fear of contracting it, or even losing his life to it. In short, these conditions were – for that long period of a few years – truly ‘extremely difficult’.”
The government recommended a prison sentence of 12.5 years.
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