Crime & Safety
Robbery Suspect Runs Along El Tracks, Eisenhower to Avoid Capture
Jessie Jackson, 33, is charged with robbing a woman of her iPhone at the Harlem Avenue Blue Line CTA stop.
A 33-year-old Chicago man was charged with robbery Jan. 8 after attempting to elude police by running on the CTA tracks and part of the median on the Eisenhower Expressway, police said.
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Police were dispatched to a robbery call that occurred at the CTA Blue Line stop at Harlem Avenue. The victim told police she and her mother-in-law boarded an oubound Blue Line train at Washington Boulevard and planned to ride to the end of the line at Des Plaines Avenue.
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As the train traveled west along the line, a witness told police that a man, later identified as Jessie Jackson, entered the car. As the train pulled into the Harlem Avenue station and the doors of the car began to open, Jackson grabbed an iPhone from the victim's left hand. The witness yelled at Jackson who proceeded to run westbound on the platform and up the ramp to the Circle Avenue exit.
As Forest Park and Oak Park police searched the area for the suspect, a Forest Park detective spotted a subject matching the offender's description walking east on the CTA tracks in between Harlem and Wisconsin avenues in Oak Park.
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From his vantage point atop the Circle Avenue overpass, the officer was able to radio the subject's location while units at street level set up a perimeter. Units from both departments were sent to the Oak Park Avenue Blue Line CTA stop anticipating that he might try to jump the fence that separated the tracks from CTA passenger service and at either side of the Eisenhower embankment, police said.
As police watched his movements, Jackson abruptly charged direction and started to cut across all of the train tracks and enter the Eisenhower in the eastbound lanes of traffic.
Jackson continued running north until almost 12 p.m., when he was taken into custody while crossing the concrete median of the Eisenhower west of Oak Park Avenue by Cook County Sheriff's police.
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