Who was Joe Schelstraete? Chicago Uber driver dies 2 days after carjackers shot him in head
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: An Uber driver, who was a father-of-three was shot in the head and left brain-dead during a carjacking in Cicero, a suburb in Chicago after he handed over everything.
According to the Cicero police, Joe Schelstraete, 38, arrived at 23rd Street and 55th Avenue just after 7:30 pm on Monday, May 31, when he was approached by four armed people. The assailants demanded money and the driver's cellphone, and he handed everything over. Police reports suggest that Schelstraete was in his blue Ford Focus when the suspects approached his car and attempted to carjack him. One of the suspects shot Schelstraete in the head during the confrontation, before fleeing the scene with the three other assailants.
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Around two months earlier we reported the fatal killing of Mohammad Anwar, who was an Uber eats driver. Anwar, 66, was reportedly killed by two teenage girls, 13, from Southeast DC and another, 15, from Fort Washington, Maryland, who tried carjacking him near Nationals Park using a stun gun. Anwar moved to the US in 2014, from Pakistan. He was a father and a grandfather. He was survived by a wife and two adult children in the US, while his four grandchildren live in Pakistan.
Schelstraete had been working for a rideshare company on the fateful evening shift when he attempted to pick up a fare. Even after giving up the assets these assailants demanded, they shot him anyway. The group then fled the scene heading south. Police later searched the area and arrested one juvenile male near the crime scene. Three other suspects are currently being sought.
Schelstraete was taken to Loyola University Medical Center after the shooting, and the family was making arrangements for his organs to be donated. On Wednesday, June 2, he died shortly before noon, his family told the station.
"It is a really senseless tragedy," his aunt Kim Bova said. Bova stated that Schelstraete was brain-dead since the initial gunshot wound to his head. She recalled that first responders said he had no pulse when they first arrived to the crime scene. Bova remembers Schelstraete as a hardworking, single father who was very engaged in the lives of his three children. He was doing town jobs for a better living, one with Uber and another with a local Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill. He spent almost all of his little free time with his children, Bova said. "He also had a terrific, dry sense of humor. Joe was just ... always smiling," she said. "There was this enthusiasm to see you and ask about you. (He was) just a very warm soul." "I just saw (him) as a very loving, engaged father," she said.
"He’s a hardworking man, he has three young kids, and he was just out trying to make a dollar," Police Chief Jerry Chlada Jr said at a televised news conference.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Cicero Police Department at 708-652-2130 or the tip hotline at 708-863-2677. Individuals can also send an online tip at www.thetownofcicero.com/submit-a-tip/ or can also anonymously text 847411 using the keyword, “CICERO411,” followed by a space and the tip information.