Women get three years for roles in attack on salesman

Two Chicago women were sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison for their roles in an attack on a jewelry salesman in downtown Arlington Heights last fall.

Jhoana Rancan, 36, and Vanessa Ortiz, 19, were two of five people charged in connection with the November crime. Rancan and Ortiz rode in one of the two cars that followed a jewelry salesman from Raphael Jewelers on Waukegan Road in Glenview to Keswick Jewelers on Evergreen Avenue in Arlington Heights, prosecutors said.

Police investigators had set up surveillance outside the Glenview jewelry store and watched as the two cars tailed the jewelry salesman, who was carrying a backpack full of rings and bracelets valued at $800,0000, prosecutors said.

Police looked on as two men traveling in the second car -- Ricardo Montaivan and Eliu Alverio -- proceeded to block the jewelry salesman as he attempted to leave the Arlington Heights parking lot. They then smashed the window of his car and grabbed the backpack full of jewelry, prosecutors said.

Montaivan and Alverio fled with the jewelry and then got into the car the women were driving, prosecutors said.

Police recovered the jewelry and made the arrests when they pulled over the getaway car a short distance from the jewelry store.

Alverio was sentenced to 10 years in prison in March. Montaivan was deported to Colombia.

A fifth co-defendant, Ana Sanchez of Miami, did not appear in court Wednesday and Cook County Judge Thomas Fecarrota Jr. issued a warrant for her arrest. She is out on $175,000 bond.

Also on Wednesday, Rancan was sentenced to 190 days in prison after pleading guilty to retail theft. Prosecutors said she stole a bottle of perfume from the Carson Pirie Scott in Mount Prospect.