A 16-year-old boy, implicated in two separate incidents involving the theft of rideshare vehicles, is again in police custody less than two days apart. The first event unfolded late Tuesday night when an Uber driver was carjacked by teenagers, one of whom brandished a gun and fired a shot, demanding the driver exit his vehicle. After a pursuit that ended in a crash over in Bridgeton, police arrested four suspects, yet were unable to detain them, necessitating their release back to their families.
According to a report by STL Today, the recurrence of such incidents has highlighted a fault line in the judicial system, which tallies points for each alleged crime before juveniles can be held in detention. "The problem," St. Louis police spokesman Mitch McCoy explained, "is a judicial system that tracks youth arrests and assigns them points for each crime alleged." Without accruing enough points, juveniles remain outside the grasp of detention, even after being apprehended for serious crimes.
Early Thursday morning, the reiteration of this systemic shortcoming was made evident when the same 16-year-old, along with others, allegedly commandeered the vehicle of a 36-year-old Lyft driver. The rideshare driver had arrived at the intersection of Carter and North Newstead avenues to pick up a passenger. As detailed in a KSDK report, at least one male drew a gun and instructed the driver to vacate the car, which he did, allowing the teen to escape with the vehicle. No shots were fired during this incident.
Police later located the stolen car and initiated a chase that concluded on the 4200 block of Penrose, where officers managed to detain one of the suspects while the rest fled the scene. Mitch McCoy from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, in a statement obtained by First Alert 4, confirmed that the teen taken into custody was the same individual involved in the prior carjacking of an Uber driver on Tuesday night.
