An illegal immigrant with a violent criminal history was sentenced to 45 months in prison last week for a February 2021 attempted carjacking.
The defendant, 27-year-old Abdulhakim Omar Erbob, attempted to withdraw his guilty plea after he realized that it could result in his deportation.
“When Mr. Erbob entered his plea, he agreed to plead guilty to Attempted Aggravated Robbery. However, he now asserts he did not understand he could be deported as a result of his plea. Also, he was under a great deal of stress at the time of his plea,” his attorneys wrote in a court document.
This request was rejected and a judge sentenced Erbob to 45 months in prison last week. However, Erbob was credited with 177 days already served and is only required to serve two-thirds of his sentence behind bars per Minnesota law.
According to court documents, Erbob drunkenly attempted to carjack a man who was waiting for a friend outside an apartment building in St. Paul on Feb. 26, 2021.
Erbob and a male accomplice approached the victim and asked him for a ride. When he refused, Erbob “began to punch him in the face” and strangled him, court records state.
The victim said Erbob attempted to push him out of the vehicle. The victim briefly drove away from the scene with Erbob still in the vehicle but returned after learning that his friend had called the police.
“He drove across three lanes of traffic and parked his car perpendicular to the front of the police squad car. He appeared frightened. There was a male in his passenger seat. The passenger was later identified as the defendant,” a criminal complaint says.
Erbob was previously convicted of first-degree aggravated robbery in connection to a 2013 mugging of a man in downtown Minneapolis. Documents from the case state that Erbob “was seen holding down the arms of the victim while his cohort beat the victim and took the victim’s belongings from his pockets.”
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office later asked a judge to revoke Erbob’s probation because he failed to “take his chemical health issues seriously and has failed to respond to his probation officer’s attempts to contact him.”
In a letter to the judge in his most recent case, Erbob expressed a desire to change, said he “found God,” and was looking forward to participating in a treatment program.
Erbob has a long criminal record that includes another felony robbery conviction and a felony conviction for fleeing a police officer.
Anthony Gockowski
Anthony Gockowski is Editor-in-Chief of Alpha News. He previously worked as an editor for The Minnesota Sun and Campus Reform, and wrote for the Daily Caller.
