Victim in Beverly carjacking recounts incident as two suspects in custody

Michele Pettiford needed to park her car on the street this week.

Two weeks ago, she was carjacked in her own driveway and she couldn’t go back to the spot where robbers forced her to the ground behind her Beverly home and racked a gun pointed straight at her husband, Jeff, who ran out of the house to her screams.

The thieves made off with the family’s 2012 Audi sedan, Jeff’s money clip and Michelle’s purse containing keys to their other car, a 2019 Range Rover SUV, according to authorities.

The family’s next days were spent grappling with the violent attack, captured in disturbing, widely-shared surveillance footage. Jeff Pettiford reassured his frightened 12-year-old daughter, who was getting out of the car returning from volleyball practice when the robbers struck, that the thieves were unlikely to return.

But early Tuesday, Michele Pettiford looked outside. The Range Rover was no longer in front of the house.

“The car is gone. They came back,” her husband recalled her saying. “It was panic.”

Police arrested two men, Damarri Conner, 20, and Kenneth Merritt, 26, later Tuesday for allegedly committing the first carjacking attack. Both face felony charges for aggravated vehicular hijacking and armed robbery with a firearm.

The duo appeared at the Leighton Criminal Court Building Thursday, where Circuit Judge Charles Beach ordered them detained before trial. But after the detention decision, Jeff Pettiford had only “mixed feelings.”

“I’m not happy to be here,” Pettiford told reporters in the courthouse lobby. “It’s been a lot.”

The 46-year-old had put on his green sweater to go to the detention hearing. It was the same sweater he wore when he and his family were held up at gunpoint.

He wore it, he told the Tribune, to send a message.

“I was hoping they’d look over. I wanted to look them in the eye and make sure they understood that I was there and they recognize me,” he said, “so they understand that someone is standing up to them.”

Pettiford, who sat in the courtroom’s first row, was joined by over a dozen friends on the wooden benches, including Ald. Matt O’Shea, 19th. During the hearing, he stared ahead, taking notes and sitting at attention as prosecutors and defense attorneys argued.

Prosecutors asserted surveillance footage captured Conner and Merritt traveling by bus near the family’s Far Southwest Side home, committing the crime and using Pettiford’s credit card to put gas in a stolen Porsche an hour later.

Merritt was taken into custody while meeting with his parole officer Tuesday morning. He admitted to police he was at the scene of the crime, which he said was supposed to be a “smash-and-grab” and was initiated because Conner was “thirsty for a car,” prosecutors said.

Two hours after Merritt was taken into custody, officers arrested Conner, who they found in a home’s upstairs closet after tracking down a “trail vehicle” that followed close behind the Pettifords’ Range Rover after it was stolen, according to prosecutors. No one has yet been charged in the theft of the Range Rover. Conner also faces three misdemeanor counts for resisting arrest.

While only Merritt’s face was clearly visible in surveillance footage because the other attacker wore a mask, police found the second attacker’s outfit in Conner’s room: a black Nike sweatshirt, a Columbia jacket and Timberland boots, the prosecutor said.

The public defender assigned to the men argued Merritt should receive leniency for cooperating, while Conner should receive leniency because surveillance footage and Merritt’s admission couldn’t sufficiently tie him to the crime. The public defender called for electronic monitoring.

However, Beach ruled the men should be detained, in part citing their extensive criminal histories.

Both alleged attackers have felony convictions. Merritt has been convicted of five felonies, including for possession of a stolen car, armed robbery and burglary, prosecutors said.

In 2016, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for three separate felonies he had committed while on probation, prosecutors said, adding that he was released in 2021. A parole sentence related to the 2016 convictions is set to end in 2024, prosecutors said.

Conner was awaiting trial on an aggravated unlawful use of a weapon charge when he allegedly robbed the Pettiford family, prosecutors said. The charges stem from a May arrest in which police say he had a pistol he didn’t legally own as they responded to calls of shots fired. He has also been convicted of misdemeanor theft, battery and assault, prosecutors said.

Ahead of the hearing, Pettiford said he was troubled by a real possibility that the men could have been released before trial.

“The fact that we’re coming here today thinking, ‘Hey are they going to be back out in our community?’ It’s just a sad statement,” he said later.

The husband and father isn’t sure what the solutions are, he said.

“But clearly there’s a problem when you could have prevented all of this at multiple points and it’s not happening,” Pettiford said. “This didn’t have to happen. And this isn’t a one-off.”

Robberies are up 25% across Chicago this year. Meanwhile, motor vehicle thefts have jumped 52% and are up 232% since 2019, according to Chicago Police Department data.

After the hearing, O’Shea said Chicago’s strict gun laws need to be more strictly enforced.

“When we see individuals with track records of violence like these two in court today, they need to be taken off the street. They need to be held accountable. They need to be in jail,” he said. “We don’t need to talk about rehabilitation. We need to take this senseless violence off the streets.”

O’Shea added that he expects to “get justice” in the Pettifords’ case because of the alleged attackers’ missteps, but he’s less hopeful for other carjacking victims.

Similarly, Pettiford expects that his alleged attackers will be convicted, but he also doesn’t think most victims get the community support that his family has received, he said. He said he’s shared his experience in part to feel like he has control, but also to shed light on those other cases.

The initial attack and subsequent car theft brought Pettiford new problems and challenges: talking with police, sorting out insurance, answering reporters. He had to borrow his mother’s car and will likely need to get his own vehicles rekeyed when they are returned, he said.

And he’s trying to figure out what to say to his kids after their home was targeted for a second time, he added.

“I just hope they can’t come back next month, next year,” Pettiford said.

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