Woman charged in Orland carjacking

April Schmidt, of Wood River, IL., who has been charged with aggravated vehicular hijacking in connection with a Monday night carjacking in Orland Park. |~Supplied Photo.

Updated: July 29, 2012 5:08PM

A woman from downstate Illinois has been charged with aggravated vehicular hijacking in connection with a carjacking that occurred Monday night in Orland Park.

Police on Wednesday continued to search for her partner, a 23-year-old Homer Glen man recently released from prison after serving less than five years on convictions for offenses including residential burglary and possession of a stolen motor vehicle.

Orland Park police said that April Schmidt, 22, of Wood River, had a bond hearing Wednesday and was released on electronic home monitoring. She is due back at the Bridgeview courthouse on July 16. Wood River is near St. Louis.

Police allege Schmidt’s accomplice used a pellet gun that resembled a real weapon to steal a car belonging to an employee of Red Lobster, 14750 S. LaGrange Road. Schmidt hid in some nearby bushes and got into the passenger seat of the vehicle, which fled south on LaGrange Road.

Police pursued the vehicle to an area near the Orland Grasslands, near LaGrange and 167th Street, where the man bailed out and fled on foot, leaving Schmidt behind, where she was taken into custody.

Aided by police from Orland Hills and Tinley Park, as well as a Cook County sheriff’s police helicopter, Orland Park police were unable to track down the man in the heavily wooded area.

“We are actively looking for him,” Orland Park Police Sgt. Scott Malmborg said Wednesday.

The man was released from a prison in downstate Canton on June 14 after being held since July 2007 for convictions on offenses that included a home burglary in unincorporated Will County, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Malmborg said Schmidt didn’t give police any indication that she and her accomplice targeted the Red Lobster for the carjacking.

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