At the age when many kids are busy with homework and sports, he already was a seasoned bandit.
Just 12 years old and barely 5-foot-3, the boy had earned his stripes in a robbery crew, snatching iPhones on train platforms and flipping them for cash.
Now, he’s known on the street as Baby 7. And cops say the 15-year-old has been one of the most prolific members of a teenage crime ring that’s been running amok across Chicago: the SRT Boys.
Sum Real Threats. That’s what they call themselves. A twisted tribute to muscle cars like Dodge Challengers with “Street and Racing Technology” or SRT — the kind rappers boast about and carjackers like to boost.
The streets were theirs. And they didn’t care who knew it.
“They would look for the police because they wanted the police to chase them,” a police source says. “And then they lean out the window and yell ‘cowards’ and laugh. And then, during all this, they’ve got their phones, so they’re filming this.”
They began their crime spree during the COVID-19 shutdown, a time when they were supposed to be studying at home because the city’s schools were closed.
But, for many of these kids, there was nobody to call them back home, to check whether they were tucked into bed at night. Some of their parents were hustling, too, or in jail — or dead.
One woman says she lived in the same building as her great-grandson, who the police now say was associated with the SRT Boys. She says she didn’t have any idea he was involved in crimes until he was arrested for trying to rob a man at gunpoint in 2022.
The band of more than 30 kids rode five-deep in stolen vehicles and posted its exploits on YouTube and Instagram. Part-street gang, part-rap label.
They were one of the most active robbery crews on the West Side. Maybe the entire city.
For years, they were the masked men — children, actually — Chicago drivers feared on the North Side, the South Side and the West Side, in wealthy and poor neighborhoods alike.
Carjackings were soaring. And drivers were keeping their heads on a swivel out of fear of becoming the next victim.
But in the same North Lawndale neighborhood where the SRT Boys were training to become adult criminals, other kids were in school, studying, volunteering to stop violence among their peers — and avoiding those same scary blocks where the robbers hung out.
Davion Washington, 17, a member of the “Peace Warriors” at North Lawndale College Prep, says many kids in the neighborhood “idolize” the street lifestyle that rappers promote, and some get drawn in.
“I know a few people that fell real deep into it,” says Washington. “At this point, it ain’t no returning. You’re kind of stuck. But I feel like they don’t see that.”
‘Culture of lawlessness’
The number of carjackings in Chicago has come down. And, police say, the SRT Boys have a new hustle: yanking ATMs and cash registers from stores, sometimes using chains attached to stolen vehicles.
Smash, grab, go.
The police say they caught three crew members last year after they bailed from a boosted car with two cash registers in the trunk.
The SRT Boys have taken advantage of a juvenile court system that, to them, is little more than a revolving door, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found. When they get arrested, they know they won’t stay in custody for long.
A police source says the crew’s evolution from phone-snatching to carjacking to commercial burglary is “a perfect example of just why things can go bad.
“Look at the number of them, with nobody, nobody stopping them. It’s just a failure of the system all the way around. And then people get hurt, and people get killed.”
They’ve told authorities they’re affiliated with the Four Corner Hustlers, New Breeds and Traveling Vice Lords, old-time gangs on the West Side. But, according to police sources, they’re really just their own social media “clique.”
Rappers in their group have tried to shape themselves in the images of Chief Keef or Lil Durk by posting “diss tracks” and alarming videos.
In one song, Baby 7 raps in a jarringly high-pitched little kid’s voice about shooting a rival in the face with an AR-15 rifle. In videos, SRT Boys are shown toting machine guns, flashing cash and drinking lean, a mix of pop and prescription cough syrup.
Lance Williams, a professor of urban community studies at Northeastern Illinois University, works with at-risk kids in North Lawndale. He says crews like the SRT Boys grew out of a culture of lawlessness during the pandemic.
They weren’t in the classroom. They weren’t playing sports. And nobody was there to make them, it seems.
They wore balaclavas to cover their faces, taking the government’s masking guidance aimed at slowing the spread of COVID and using it to thwart law enforcement.
Meantime, the police pulled back from routine patrols and assertive policing to limit their contact with sick people, Williams says.
“The guys took this as an opportunity to get buckwild,” he says. “If you got caught as a pre-teen, you would be home at the end of the day. I think that contributed to this spike in carjackings and robberies and criminal behavior.”
The SRT Boys’ start in carjacking
The SRT Boys got into carjacking in 2021, the year that crime peaked in Chicago. They’ve been charged with dozens of crimes, mostly on the West Side but also downtown, on the North Side, the South Side and Oak Park.
The kids quickly got the attention of the Chicago Police Department’s brass. The SRT Boys have been mentioned in more than 75,000 emails since Jan. 1, 2023, police officials said in response to a public records request.
About one-third of the more than 30 people police have identified as SRT Boys were charged with possession of a stolen vehicle or trespassing in a vehicle by the end of 2023, the most recent year for which the Sun-Times was able to obtain complete arrest summaries for the crew.
In one case, a boy was arrested in November 2023 after the police said he crashed into two vehicles and flipped a stolen car as he led police on a chase through the western suburbs. He was 16.
During those three years, only a handful of the SRT Boys were charged with vehicular hijacking, a more serious felony. Prosecutors often don’t have enough evidence to file those charges because carjackers typically cover their faces, and their victims can’t identify them.
Only one SRT Boy is as old as 21. The youngest four are 15. Almost every one of them has a youth rap sheet, and some have now been charged as adults.
One reputed crew member, Deandre Johnson, is facing murder charges in a killing last Nov. 4 on the West Side. “What the f— you looking at?” Johnson, 18, said before shooting 20-year-old Rayjay James at the GoLo gas station at 3731 W. Roosevelt Road, according to prosecutors.
Jeremiah Brown, another alleged SRT Boy, is now serving a nine-year prison term for an attempted armed robbery. The 20-year-old has a young daughter who lives with her mom.
On Dec. 5, 2022, Brown pointed a gun in the face of a man smoking a cigarette in his truck in the southeast corner of Austin.
The man, a concealed-carry permit-holder, grabbed the extended magazine of Brown’s gun, then pulled his own pistol and shot him and two of his teenage accomplices. One of the kids crashed the stolen car they fled in. It had been used in armed robberies on the Northwest Side earlier in the day, according to the police.
In another case in 2017, the same concealed-carry holder shot three “outlaw” motorcycle gang members who attacked him and his friends outside a Northwest Side bar, court records show. In both cases, prosecutors concluded that the man fired in self-defense.
Clarice Webber, Brown’s great-grandmother, says he grew up in an old graystone building in the heart of North Lawndale. Webber lived on one floor and Brown on another with his mother and brother.
Webber remembers Brown as a precocious child who loved to ride bikes and play basketball with his friends.
“He was real funny, like he’d crack a joke,” Webber says. “It was always something to make people laugh about. He used to try to rap, too.”
Webber says she was consumed with her work at the Chicago Board of Education and that, as Brown grew older, they grew apart.
Brown went to high school through his junior year. He was involved with Chicago CRED, an anti-violence program, and was undergoing counseling up to his 2022 arrest, according to court records.
Webber says she didn’t realize Brown was “getting in trouble” until he was arrested but thinks now that he “ended up with the wrong group of boys.”
“I can’t see Jeremiah trying to do this on his own, trying to rob somebody,” she says. “I’m sorry that happened.”
Brown is now locked up in an Illinois prison southeast of St. Louis.
Some of the other reputed SRT Boys who’ve gotten caught up in the adult court system include:
- Zhadyn Payton, 20, who was sentenced to probation after he was caught last year with a Glock with an extended magazine and an illegal “switch” that converts handguns into automatic weapons. Prosecutors say Payton has since tested positive for fentanyl and failed to seek a job or get a GED, violating the terms of his release. He faces another charge after being arrested last month, accused of punching a gas station clerk in Oak Park.
- Theiotus Martin, 20, who’s serving three years in a downstate prison for possessing a 3D-printed “ghost gun” and driving a stolen car that he crashed into a sport-utility vehicle and flipped. He previously was convicted of spitting in a cop’s face after he and Payton were arrested in a stolen car in December 2022.
- And Michael Alvarez, 18, who’s facing gun possession charges.
In March, Alvarez was arrested with three older men riding around in a car without license plates in Brighton Park, according to the police, who said a 911 caller reported that they were trying to break in to homes and garages.
They were armed, masked and carrying a garage-door opener, police said. The four have pleaded not guilty to felony gun charges.
Another reputed SRT Boy, Jayquan Love, was shot outside his North Lawndale home on Oct. 21 and died 12 days later. He was 17. No one’s been charged in his killing.
As a teen, Love was charged with armed robbery, receiving a stolen vehicle, illegal gun possession and aggravated battery of a police officer.
Love had moved to Chicago from Mississippi, according to his obituary, which said his nickname was “Sheisty” and that he was enrolled in North Lawndale College Prep High School. At least one other SRT Boy went to the same school, according to police.
Love lived with his mother and two brothers, police records show. Baby 7 gave police the same address.
Sun-Times reporters tried to speak with members of the SRT Boys, sending them letters in prison and jail, but none responded.
Law enforcement officials agreed to speak at length about the SRT Boys but only on the condition that they not be named.
‘Baby 7′
Over the past year, the SRT Boys have stayed busy — committing crimes and posting rap videos about their exploits.
One of the busiest crew members is Baby 7, the kid who was snatching cellphones at a CTA Pink Line stop when he was just 12. He’s been arrested at least nine times and is suspected of many more crimes.
He has been charged in juvenile court with vehicular hijacking, robbery and possession of stolen vehicles, police records show.
He was just a toddler when his life turned tragic.
His mother was killed in 2013 when a man opened fire on her grandmother’s home in Danville, about 140 miles south of Chicago. Baby 7 and his mother were living there, though he was at a relative’s home in Chicago when the shooting happened.
Five years later, an uncle of Baby 7 went to prison for killing a man he thought was responsible for the shooting, according to news reports.
According to Baby 7’s great-grandmother, his father in Chicago took custody of him after his mom’s death.
His great-grandmother, who lived on the West Side until she moved to Danville in 2000, says she doesn’t really know Baby 7.
“I only see him on occasions like his birthday and Christmas and stuff like that,” she says. “He don’t come down here. I always go to the city.”
She says Baby 7 lives with a grandmother on the West Side.
His father has an extensive criminal record. In 2016, he was convicted of being an armed habitual criminal and was sent to prison for stealing an AR-15 rifle from a cousin who’s a former military police officer. Last month, he was arrested in Naperville for elbowing a cop in the face, according to police.
His family in Chicago couldn’t be reached.
But a glimpse of his upbringing is revealed in the things he puts on social media.
In 2020, using Baby 7’s real name, a young boy posted a recording of himself playing Grand Theft Auto, a video game that lets players shoot and carjack people in a virtual cityscape. You don’t see him but can hear him telling his friends to put on virtual face masks and murder a rival in the game.
Soon, life was imitating art.
Riding in stolen cars, Baby 7 would wave guns at students walking home from school, a police source says.
He was arrested once for stealing a Tesla on the North Side. He streamed a live video of the crime, which police say helped identify him and his buddies.
Like ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’
Baby 7 and the other SRT Boys learned how to steal Kias and Hyundais by watching a TikTok video that went viral in 2021, according to law enforcement sources.
A robbery crew in Milwaukee had posted a social media challenge for people to steal those cars because their ignition systems were easy to hot-wire with just a screwdriver and an iPhone cable.
The SRT Boys accepted the challenge and learned how to snatch those cars quickly.
“It was like the movie ‘Gone in 60 Seconds,’ ” says the police source.
According to another law enforcement official, the crew members have specialized talents.
Some are skilled at driving.
Some are bigger guys, so they’re the ones who open car doors to pull out the frightened drivers.
Some are good at cracking a steering column.
Others are tech-savvy.
“When they would steal a car, and they would need to get key fobs for it, they would have a guy come out who worked for all the crews,” a law enforcement source says. “It was just like calling a roadside repair person to show up in his car, reprogram the vehicle for you with new keys, and then he’d be gone.”
The SRT Boys would use stolen cars to joyride or commit other crimes, like robberies and shootings, before dumping them.
At least seven of the kids in the crew, including Baby 7, lived in the 3500 block of West Douglas Boulevard and the 1300 block of South Christiana Avenue in North Lawndale. They’d often abandon their stolen cars in alleys close to where they lived.
Many have since moved away because of the spotlight on their families from the police and city officials, law enforcement sources say.
Now, members of the SRT Boys are scattered throughout the West Side and other parts of the city. One got shot in a hand recently in Austin.
“They still see each other,” the police source says. “But they aren’t what they once were.”
To combat the carjacking epidemic fueled by the SRT Boys and other robbery crews, the Chicago Police Department started a Vehicular Hijacking Task Force in 2021. The unit includes the Cook County sheriff’s office, the Illinois State Police and federal authorities.
Using Strategic Decision Support Centers — intelligence hubs inside Chicago police district stations — the task force has been able to track carjacked vehicles with surveillance cameras, license-plate readers and helicopters. That lets the police capture suspects without having officers engage in dangerous high-speed car chases.
Police say the task force is one reason the numbers of carjackings and other types of robberies are down.
“We obviously need cooperation and collaboration, and that’s what’s helped us get to the bottom of groups like these SRT Boys,” Chicago police Supt. Larry Snelling says.
Cash registers in the trunk
Teenage carjackers like the SRT Boys have turned to burglaries in part because of the task force’s success at arresting them, according to law enforcement sources.
“You see that on the news now, burglaries to commercial businesses,” one source says. “They are way more lucrative than grabbing some woman getting into her car, and you got her purse or credit card and a phone.”
There’s also less chance of getting caught doing smash-and-grabs, the source says: “Very seldom do we catch the guys doing commercial burglaries in the act. They hit it fast. They’re in and out. It’s always late at night.”
Last Nov. 13, the police confirmed a hunch that the SRT Boys were breaking into businesses when three members of the crew — all teens — were arrested after bailing from a stolen Kia in Lincoln Park at Sheridan Road and Cannon Drive. One kid lost both of his Nike Air Force 1 gym shoes during a foot chase.
Officers found two cash registers in the trunk of the car.
The three boys were charged with smash-and-grab burglaries on the North Side at Tobacco Express of Chicago, a vape shop at 2117 W. Irving Park Road, and at Lakeside Food, Wine and Spirits, 801 W. Irving Park Road.
Police retrieved surveillance videos of the Kia at the scenes of those two burglaries, but investigators think the SRT Boys committed another burglary that wasn’t captured on camera the same night in the South Loop.
“It was a hassle because they broke the window and kicked over an entire aisle to get in,” says Mehulbhai Patel, a manager of Lakeside Food, Wine and Spirits. “Bottles broke, food fell on the floor. We had to clean up the mess.”
He says the burglars weren’t able to open the store’s cash registers, which each contained $200. The police gave the store the money back, Patel says.
“When something like this happens, it scares the employees, it scares the neighborhood,” he says.
Patel says repairs to the store have cost more than $10,000.
Letting ‘this forest fire . . . burn itself out’
Williams, the Northeastern Illinois professor, says there isn’t a clear solution to this teenage mayhem. He’s mentored kids in North Lawndale and worries that Chicago’s mayors have “given up” on trying to break the cycle of crime and despair that’s gone on for generations.
“I think they recognize that the resources that will be required to fix this problem are so massive that [there] is no way that they could do the political work to invest in these places,” Williams says.
Those who are at the highest risk of committing violent crimes or becoming victims need tailored services like mental health treatment and stable housing, Williams says.
He says the best strategy is to target individual crews of kids like the SRT Boys but that it requires regular face-to-face time between the teenagers and mentors like him.
Ultimately, he expects to turn around the lives of only a few kids at a time.
“I think basically the city’s strategy is just to let this forest fire that’s raging in these neighborhoods just burn itself out and drive that population out or down to the point that then the problem kind of goes away on its own,” Williams says.
‘Detention really has to be a last resort’
Prosecutors and community organizations say they haven’t given up on these kids.
Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke campaigned on a promise to address youth carjackings and robberies. Instead of creating a policy that seeks to lock up more kids who get arrested for such crimes, she’s trying to tailor a program to “violent juvenile offenders” like the SRT Boys, according to her policy chief, Yvette Loizon.
Those kids would stay in school and get cognitive behavioral therapy, mentoring and job training, Loizon says.
“Because I think everyone can agree that detention really has to be a last resort for juveniles when there are other options,” she says.
During the pandemic, the Sun-Times sat in on juvenile court hearings for kids charged with carjackings and other robberies. Most of those kids were released to their legal guardians.
But the judge also ordered special services for those teens, including at-home help with school and mental health therapy.
Reporters were unable, though, to review records for the SRT Boys to see what happened in their particular cases and whether they were offered the same support.
Jason Little grew up in North Lawndale and was drawn to the streets. He faced his first drug charge when he was 17 and was seriously wounded in a shooting a few years later.
Now, he dedicates his life to disrupting the violence that has ravaged his community, working as the director of training and best practices for Chicago CRED, a nonprofit co-founded by former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
“I have hope in boots on the ground,” Little says.
CRED relies on an army of outreach workers who target high-risk people, including the SRT Boys. Getting through to them can be tough but isn’t impossible, he says.
“Once you get them to realize that there are only two outcomes to what you do — death and jail — that’s when the light comes on,” he says.
‘Helping to resolve conflicts’
Michael Alvarez, 18, the reputed SRT Boy arrested on adult gun charges in March, is among those who’ve had the “light come on,” according to his mentors. Alvarez has been working with the Alliance of Local Service Organizations, according to Samuel Santana, a program manager for the group.
“Mr. Alvarez has been instrumental in helping to resolve conflicts within the street organizations in Humboldt Park and other areas,” Santana said in a letter to the judge presiding over Alvarez’s case. “It pains me to see him face scrutiny in the public eye. While he still grapples with the challenges of his past, he is determined to pursue a better existence.”
Alvarez, who has an infant son, was planning to graduate from Amundsen High School this year, his lawyer said in a court filing. After a hearing last month, Alvarez, who was with his mother, declined to comment.
‘All young people aren’t going down this pathway of darkness’
At North Lawndale College Prep, where some of the SRT Boys went to school, students deputized as Peace Warriors work to quell disputes and keep their classmates on the right path.
Davion Washington, the Peace Warriors’ student administrator, says he’d heard of the SRT Boys and avoids their onetime stronghold near Central Park Avenue and Douglas Boulevard.
He points to the pandemic as a turning point for students from the neighborhood, saying he saw a “change” in friends who turned to the streets during the COVID lockdowns.
“We grew up together, so I never thought that would happen,” he says. “So it’s hurtful.”
The Peace Warriors program was built around the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s principles of nonviolence and draws students from North Lawndale College Prep’s two campuses. In 1968, King lived in the neighborhood to highlight dire conditions there.
Participants in the program welcome classmates to school, console those who are grieving and use “peace circles” to address conflicts, many which start online.
Program manager Gerald Smith says the Peace Warriors also can “use their voice to not only speak on their behalf, but to speak on behalf of other young people who may not have this opportunity.”
“They can help people recognize all young people aren’t going down this pathway of darkness,” he says. “They use themselves to inspire hope.”
Contributing: Rosemary Sobol, Chip Mitchell, Patrick Smith
