Chicago – A federal judge has sentenced a man to more than 14 years in prison for firing at least 14 shots during a failed carjacking and then successfully hijacking another car nearby. Anthony Blackburn, 22, was released in crime pretrial for another stolen vehicle case when he committed the crimes.
At 2.15 pm on November 16, 2020, a man rode in the 4700 block of West Polk when another driver cut him off. Blackburn came from the backseat of the other vehicle with a gun equipped with an automatic fire switch, which could work as a machine gun, said public prosecutors.
Blackburn ran to the victim’s car and ordered him under shot. But the driver accelerated instead and Blackburn unleashed a flood of 14 shots at the fleeing vehicle. The victim was not shot, but bullets crowded his rear window and both side windows of the driver. A round hit a door handle, shattered and a fragment of the handle embedded in his arm.
“Many people would have called it a day after a failed carjacking and an almost murder,” wrote a federal public prosecutor in a conviction memorandum. “But [the] The suspect continued. “
Blackburn walked to a Lexus SUV parked in the neighborhood with two men in it. He ordered them under shot and drove away with their car. The entire scene is said to be recorded on surveillance video.
Four days later, Cicero police found the hijacked car in a motel in their city. Surveillance video showed Blackburn from the hijacked vehicle and entering a room, said public prosecutors. The police searched the room and would have found Blackburn inside with a loaded gun that had still confirmed the machine gun switch together with an extensive ammunition magazine. Laboratory tests confirmed that the firearm was the same weapon that fired the shots on Polk Street.
In their conviction memo, public prosecutors recognized the difficult education of Blackburn.
“His childhood was extremely difficult; His mother was addicted to drugs and his father sold drugs. At a very young age, the suspected friends of guns violence lost, “they wrote.
The FBI asked for a penalty of 192 months. Blackburn’s lawyer searched for 97 months.
After Blackburn committed carjacking and using a firearm while committing a violent crime, the American district judge Sharon Johnson Coleman settled in 171 months, similar to 14 years and three months.
