A detention hearing was scheduled for Monday afternoon for Benjamin Villanueva, who Chicago police say was arrested after an armed carjacking and a crash involving multiple vehicles. The reported hearing date is not itself a ruling on whether he will be detained: an Illinois appellate court says prosecutors must prove by clear and convincing evidence that the charge qualifies for detention, the defendant poses a real and present safety threat based on specific facts, and no release conditions can mitigate that threat, as explained in a 2026 Illinois Appellate Court decision.
Police say the case began early Sunday near the Lincoln Park Zoo, where a couple was forced from a Dodge Charger at gunpoint. A preliminary police report described by CWB Chicago places the carjacking around 12:46 a.m. on the 2500 block of North Cannon Drive; the Chicago Police Department release also identifies that block as the location where the vehicle was taken.
According to CWB Chicago’s account of the preliminary report, officers later spotted the stolen car near Halsted Street and Belmont Avenue. The driver went the wrong way on Aldine Avenue before the Charger struck a Toyota at Clark Street, setting off a collision involving parked cars. Four people were taken to hospitals in fair condition, the report said. Police said Villanueva was arrested in an alley near Wilton Avenue.
The department’s release says Villanueva was charged with aggravated vehicular hijacking with a firearm, aggravated battery of a peace officer, unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon, criminal trespass and aggravated assault. CWB Chicago reported that he had been released from state prison three months earlier, on July 2, after serving half of a 12-year sentence for a 2020 armed-robbery conviction. That history is part of the reporting on the case; it does not, by itself, establish that the legal test for pretrial detention has been met.
A citywide enforcement effort
The incident is one case, not evidence of a citywide trend. The Chicago Police Department says its Vehicular Hijacking Task Force was expanded in 2021 and brings together city, county, state and federal law-enforcement professionals to investigate vehicle hijackings. The department’s description of that task force does not indicate whether it was involved in this investigation.
