AURORA | A man who carjacked a vehicle in an Aurora parking lot before leading police on a high-speed chase that ended in Denver has been sentenced to 64 years in prison, prosecutors said.
Grant Robert Lee, 32, was sentenced last week to more than six decades in jail after the court ruled he was not only guilty of aggravated robbery and other crimes for the 2014 carjacking and chase, but that he was a habitual criminal because of several prior felony convictions.
“After numerous failed attempts by the criminal justice system at rehabilitation and reformation, there is only one place left for a career criminal who is so willing to repeatedly put lives at risk: prison. Lots of it,” District Attorney George Brauchler said in a statement released Wednesday. “It is by the grace of God that no person was seriously injured during this crime spree.”
Prosecutors said Lee, who had been using methamphetamine and cocaine, tried to fraudulently return an item at an Aurora store on June 3, 2014, and when store employees caught on to the scam, he pulled out a box cutter and threatened them.
He then fled the store and carjacked a vehicle in the parking lot and lead police on a chase from about Interstate 225 and East Mississippi Avenue to I-25 and East Evans Avenue in Denver, prosecutors said.
Police eventually arrested Lee as he tried to carjack another vehicle in Denver.