A 15-year-old boy is accused of robbing eight people at gunpoint in under two hours last summer, with victims hit across four different Chicago neighborhoods before 7:15 in the morning. The boy was arrested Thursday and was expected to appear in juvenile court Friday, more than two months after the alleged spree, according to police.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, a juvenile petition charged the teen with eight felony counts of armed robbery and one count of possessing a stolen vehicle. Officials said the robberies played out in the Loop, Brighton Park, Back of the Yards and West Pullman on Aug. 9, with the Sun-Times reporting the string of incidents stretched from 5:30 a.m. to 7:15 a.m. ABC7 Chicago, which also covered the case, cited police as saying the window closed at 7:13 a.m. — a minor discrepancy in the reported timeline that has not been resolved between the two outlets.
The people targeted ranged in age from 21 to 62, the Sun-Times reported. ABC7 Chicago, citing details about the victims, reported that five women and three men were robbed during the spree.
Arrest Comes Months After the Alleged Spree
Police said the teen was arrested Thursday, and the Sun-Times reported he was expected to appear in juvenile court Friday — a gap of roughly two and a half months between the alleged robberies on Aug. 9 and his arrest this week. Neither report detailed how investigators connected the teen to the case or whether he was taken into custody in connection with a specific incident.
A photo accompanying the Sun-Times report, credited to Pat Nabong/Sun-Times, showed the Cook County Temporary Juvenile Detention Center, where the case is being handled through the juvenile system for now.
A Similar Case Playing Out This Month
The case echoes another recent Chicago robbery spree involving a teenager. Earlier this month, a 15-year-old boy was charged with robbing three men at gunpoint in the Loop as part of a group of seven, according to CWB Chicago. In that incident, the victims — a 19-year-old man and two 18-year-old men — were confronted in the 600 block of South State Street around 10:30 p.m., and police apprehended at least three suspects but announced charges against only the teen.
A separate case from 2022 also mirrors the latest allegations. A 14-year-old boy was arrested and charged with eight felony counts of armed robbery stemming from separate incidents on Chicago’s South Side between November and December of that year, WTTW News reported at the time. Those alleged victims ranged in age from 17 to 31.
What Illinois Law Says About Minors and Armed Robbery
Under Cook County’s juvenile-court rules, a minor age 15 or older charged with certain offenses — including armed robbery committed with a firearm — can be automatically prosecuted as an adult without a Juvenile Court hearing, according to information published by Cook County.
The Broader Robbery Trend in Chicago
The alleged spree comes even as citywide robbery numbers have been trending downward. Chicago’s reported robbery rate was 28% lower in the first half of 2026 than during the same period in 2025, according to the Council on Criminal Justice. The organization also found the rate was 43% lower than in the first half of 2019, and that the 2026 rate of 77.6 robberies per 100,000 residents marked a 55% drop from the same period in 2018.
The same analysis found a more mixed picture for violent crime overall. Chicago’s gun assault rate was 8% lower in the first half of 2026 than a year earlier but 1% higher than in the same period of 2019, while the city’s homicide rate was 3% higher in the first half of 2026 than during the first half of 2025, per the Council on Criminal Justice’s data.
