Driver in 2016 kidnapping of Wheaton College student gets 10 years
The driver in the 2016 kidnapping and armed robbery of a 21-year-old Wheaton College student that began outside a Glen Ellyn coffee shop is headed to prison for 10 years.
Abeet Ramos, 21, of the 900 block of West Spring Street in South Elgin, pleaded guilty in March to armed robbery in exchange for prosecutors agreeing to cap their sentencing recommendation at 15 years.
Handing down the sentence, DuPage County Judge John Kinsella lectured Ramos, who was 18 when he was arrested, for his "colossal poor judgment."
"You scared this poor guy to death," Kinsella said. "He thought he was going to be killed."
Ramos, the first of three suspects to be charged in the case, has been held on $3 million bail since his Sept. 2, 2016, arrest.
Jeremy Jones, 25, of Elgin pleaded guilty to similar charges and was sentenced in January to 24 years in prison. A third co-defendant, Timothy Jones, Jeremy's brother, was shot and killed in December 2017 in an unrelated case.
Prosecutors said the victim left the coffee shop on the 500 block of Crescent Boulevard around 9:50 a.m. Aug. 26, 2016, and was walking north on Forest Avenue between Cottage Avenue and Hawthorne Boulevard when he was charged by Jones and the teen. Jones grabbed him by the shirt, threatened to shoot him and forced him into the back seat of a small SUV that Ramos was driving, authorities said.
"This was a bold and brazen armed robbery and kidnapping. The gun was eventually discovered to be a BB gun, but the victim was led to believe it was a .357," Assistant State's Attorney Nicole Wilkes-English said Thursday. "The victim still suffers from a tremendous amount of emotional distress and is plagued by nightmares."
The three took the 21-year-old victim's Colorado Rockies baseball hat, his wallet and his iPhone, forcing him to remove the pass code and tracking device. They then drove to a bank along Roosevelt Road and forced him to withdraw $1,100 from an ATM.
The trio then drove the victim to Chicago, where they made more ATM stops, forcing him to withdraw $200 at one and $300 at the other.
The trio kept him in custody, forcing him at gunpoint down on the floor in the back of the SUV, until around 11:30 a.m. when they let him loose in Chicago, gave him his iPhone and $20, and drove away, authorities said. He immediately ran inside a building and called police.
"Mr. Ramos and Mr. Jones have certainly earned the sentences imposed upon them," DuPage County State's Attorney Robert Berlin said in a written statement. "I cannot begin to imagine the terror that the victim must have felt as these defendants drove him at gunpoint from ATM to ATM and forced him to withdraw more than $1,500 from his bank account."
Ramos' attorney, David Pugh, sought a sentence of six years, meaning, with good behavior, Ramos would have been free in about 70 days.
"There is no indication he was ever any part of the plan or took a participatory role in doing anything to the victim," Pugh said. "He is sorry he did this. He's sorry he wasn't courageous enough to not participate. (Ramos) knew what kind of person Jeremy Jones was and he knew that if he crossed the line, he would be the victim."
Ramos, who has already served 1,028 days, must serve half the sentence before being eligible for parole.