Good Guy with a Gun #65: Chicago, IL (free post)
Original incident: January 2, 2024. A carjacker may be weirdly polite, but he's still a carjacker.
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The scene is Chiraq at 6:15 in the morning on a Tuesday.
The incident took place in the 9400 block of South Laflin in Chicago’s South Side.
A 39-year-old man was just about to start his Mazda CX-9 when 18-year-old Darrius Berry pointed a gun at him through the driver’s side window.
Except for the gun-in-the-face part, Berry was a polite carjacker.
“Please give me the keys,” he said. “I need your car. I’m sorry, sir . . . Go in the house.”
The victim complied, retreating into the house and calling 911, but he returned with his own firearm. Berry was still there, sitting behind the wheel with his gun on the passenger’s seat.
The victim leveled his weapon at him and warned, “If you reach for it, I’ll blow your head off.” No please or thank you.
He grabbed Berry by the collar, pulled him out of the vehicle, and threw him on the ground.
“Who’s with you?” he said, wisely thinking that there might be an accomplice.
“He’s around the corner,” Berry answered.
He looked toward the corner and didn’t see anyone.
Officers responded to a call about a “citizen holding an offender.” While detaining Berry, they recovered his firearm from the car. They later discovered that it had been stolen from another vehicle about a month before the botched hijacking.
No shots were fired during this incident.
Darrius Berry. Mugshot from Chicago PD.
It’s a little weird, isn’t it? Why was he polite? Was the other person, the phantom accomplice, actually a gang member who was pressuring Berry into an initiation? Was Berry having second thoughts? Unfortunately, we just don’t know.
Berry was charged with one felony count of aggravated armed carjacking, one misdemeanor count of possessing a firearm without a valid Firearm Owner's Identification card, and one misdemeanor count of driving without a license; he was also issued two citations: driving in reverse under unsafe conditions and operating an uninsured motor vehicle.
Look closely at those charges. At The Truth About Guns, John Boch noted:
So carrying a loaded gun as a young man committing a forcible felony is now a misdemeanor? The Land of Lincoln makes it a felony to carry a loaded gun in public for most people.
Berry pleaded guilty to one count of vehicular hijacking in June 2025 and was sentenced to 10 years. CWB Chicago notes, “With the state’s standard 50% sentence reduction and credits earned while in jail, Berry will be eligible for release in just over three years.” Tick-tock.
Sources
The Chicago PD press release is here.
CWB Chicago had an initial report and a follow-up at sentencing. They consistently do a good job on these kinds of stories. The design of the site might make you look askance, but they get a lot of the details and do reporting that other sites don’t.
Fox 32 did a brief write-up.
From the 2A / conservative media side, we see the write-up I note above by John Boch at The Truth About Guns, and a write-up by Dave Urbanski at Breitbart when Berry was sentenced.
That thing that never happens, happens every day.
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Really solid breakdown of the disparity in Cook County's charging decisions. The contrast between treating a loaded gun during an armed carjacking as a misdemeanor while hitting a lawful carrier with a felony for hotel storage is absurd. The victim's quick thinking here probably saved his life, but the three-year release window after a 10-year sentance is pretty wild.