A pile of bloody clothes and bullet casings marked the scene in the 4200-block of West Maypole Avenue. Police said they found a 48-year-old man in the back of a Dodge Charger, bleeding and shot in the chest.
Police said the rideshare driver was attempting to drop off a passenger when the passenger pulled out a gun, tried to steal the car, and then shot the driver in broad daylight around 1:30 p.m.
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The man, a Lyft driver, was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where his condition was serious, according to the Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Merritt, who at first incorrectly said the driver had died.
Lyft said in a statement: “Safety is fundamental to Lyft, and the incident described is horrific. We have reached out to the driver to offer our support, removed the rider from the Lyft platform and stand ready to assist law enforcement with any investigation.”
No arrest was reported.
Police have reported several instances of ride-share drivers targeted in carjackings by their passengers. In February, a 33-year-old man who was pulled out of his vehicle at gunpoint in West Town. Also that month, two teens were charged with carjacking ride-share drivers in the Lawndale neighborhood.
On Monday night, a neighbor’s doorbell camera captured two men dragging a woman screaming in fear from her SUV near 67th and Kostner. The thieves backed into another parked car before speeding off as the female victim ran screaming for help.
In another recent Chicago carjacking, surveillance video shows two men approaching a man and woman in line outside a West Town car wash on Saturday afternoon.
Two men approached the victims, a man and woman in their 30s, as they waited in line at a car wash in the 400 block of North Halsted Street, Chicago police said.
One man is seen pointing a handgun at the driver, demanding his belongings, while the other takes the female passenger’s things. The armed pair then takes off in the victim’s Land Rover. The couple was uninjured.
They’re just a few of at least 352 carjackings across the city since the first of the year. In this same period last year, Chicago police reported just 147 carjackings, a 239% increase.
“We have taken down some of these crews which have had the more immediate impact, but the longer-term impact will be when our courts open back up,” Chicago Police Supt. David Brown said.
Now, police are trying to track down the perpetrators in these carjackings and hundreds of others.
The Sun-Times Media Wire contributed to this report.
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