Carjacker gets six years in prison for attacking Driver in the Loop while on remand for two felony cases

Carjacker gets six years in prison for attacking Driver in the Loop while on remand for two felony cases
Rodney Henderson (Chicago Police Department)

CHICAGO – A man who carjacked a driver in the Loop earlier this year while in custody for two other felony cases has been sentenced to six years in prison.

The victim, who left work around 7 a.m. on Jan. 6, drove out of a garage in the 1100 block of South Wabash, turned on his hazard lights and ran inside to hand over the garage key to the next shift, officials said.

When he returned to his car, Rodney Henderson, 36, was in the driver’s seat.

“Give me the keys or I’ll shoot you,” Henderson allegedly threatened.

The victim, who recognized Henderson as someone who had struck up a conversation with him shortly before the end of his shift, ran away with the keys. Prosecutors said Henderson chased him and “wrote” the keys from the victim’s fingers.

He returned to the man’s 2015 Volkswagen Passat and sped away, but crashed almost immediately, the state said. Chicago police officers tracked Henderson’s escape route with the city’s surveillance camera network and eventually arrested him on a Green Line train at Cermak-McCormick Place.

Henderson settled the case by pleading guilty to vehicle hijacking in exchange for a six-year prison sentence from Judge Ursula Walowski, court records show.

But before it’s all said and done, he may end up spending even more time behind bars.

Two suburban cases he was handling at the time of the hijacking are still pending in court. In those cases, Henderson is accused of having a loaded gun in a duffel bag in the Orland Square parking lot after he was caught shoplifting last summer. Prosecutors said he also stole license plates from his car.

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