MINNEAPOLIS — Editor's note: The video above first aired on KARE 11 on Feb. 9, 2023.
A Minneapolis teen has agreed to be charged as an adult in connection to more than a dozen armed robberies and assaults he was charged with as a juvenile, including an alleged violent crime spree in Fall 2021.
Jabron Jiles, 18, had been held in juvenile detention since October 2021, and is now being held at the Hennepin County Adult Detention Center on $1 million bail.
Since turning 14, Jiles has been charged with at least 29 felony crimes, according to court records. He has a history of mental illness, learning disorders and borderline intellectual functioning, records show, and was repeatedly placed into treatments and group homes, only to be unsuccessfully discharged or run away from them.
When he was 16 and already facing a dozen felony cases for stealing cars, burglaries and thefts, he's accused of breaking into Check Point Welding in North Minneapolis and robbing a man at gunpoint.
Jiles was found too mentally ill to stand trial in that case along with his other pending felonies, and would become what is known in Minnesota as a "gap case."
In such cases, defendants unable to stand trial for charges are released back into the community without appropriate treatment or supervision, as KARE 11 has exposed.
Jiles was 16 when he ended up at a Minneapolis group home that he ran from in Sept. 2021, where he and at least two others are accused of terrorizing Minneapolis over the next month.
Among those cases, according to criminal charges:
- Breaking into a South Minneapolis home on Sept. 15 and robbing the residents, including a woman holding her 3-week-old niece
- Beating an employee at the North Minneapolis Check Point Welding two weeks later
- Robbing staff at Mother Earth Gardens in South Minneapolis at gunpoint and beating one of the employees on Oct. 13
- Robbing employees at Tao Natural Food Cafe in Minneapolis at gunpoint that same day
- An armed robbery and assault on Oct. 16 at a gas station
- Two days later, robbing a Minneapolis coffee shop and repeatedly punching one of the store employees in the face, then running across the street to the Bryn Mawr Market and robbing people at gunpoint there
- On Oct. 20, robbing and assaulting staff at Lustre Skin Care
- The next day, robbing staff at the Mel-O-Glaze bakery and Dreamhaven Books before the group was finally caught
Jiles was found competent to stand trial on his charges in July.
He is scheduled to make his next court appearance on March 13, 2023.
“We are fortunate nobody lost their lives during this deeply harmful string of armed robberies," Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a statement.
"Accountability through the adult system is the appropriate path here, but we desperately need secure, community-based options that will allow us to intervene more effectively with young people long before they engage in this sort of conduct.”
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