Chicago police: Woman accidentally killed in by officer fire
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A Chicago police sergeant speaks with a relative of a 19-year-old man killed in a police-involved shooting in the West Garfield Park neighborhood in Chicago on Saturday.
Chicago police officers talk with relatives of one of the two people killed by a police officer, as they investigate a shooting in the entry of their apartment in Chicago today. A Chicago police officer shot and killed two people while responding to a domestic disturbance call in the neighborhood on the city’s West Side, police said. (Abel Uribe/Chicago Tribune via AP)
CHICAGO » A Chicago police officer responding to a domestic disturbance call Saturday accidentally shot and killed a 55-year-old woman, who was among two people fatally wounded, police said late this afternoon.
Relatives said Bettie Jones lived downstairs from Quintonio LeGrier, the 19-year-old subject of the initial call to police, who also was killed by the officer.
Officers who responded to the call “were confronted by a combative subject resulting in the discharging of the officer’s weapon,” the Chicago Police Department said in a brief statement.
“The 55-year-old female victim was accidentally struck and tragically killed,” reads the statement, which extends “deepest condolences to the victim’s family and friends.”
The shooting happened around 4:25 a.m., police said. The Cook County medical examiner’s office and family members said LeGrier, a 19-year-old college student, was pronounced dead at a hospital at 4:51 a.m. and Jones, a 55-year-old mother of five, died at a different hospital a short time later.
Both LeGrier and Jones were black, the medical examiner’s office said. Police did not immediately disclose the race of the officer, nor how long the officer has been with the department or the officer’s current work status.
The shooting comes amid a federal civil rights investigation of the Chicago Police Department launched after last month’s release of police dashcam video showing white officer Jason Van Dyke shooting black 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in 2014. Officials have said the federal investigation will look into patterns of racial disparity in the use of force, as well as review how the department disciplines officers and handles misconduct accusations.
LeGrier’s father told the Chicago Sun-Times he had invited his son to a family holiday gathering before the shooting but the younger man chose not to go. Antonio LeGrier said when he returned to his second-floor apartment early Saturday, his son appeared to be a “little agitated.”
The elder LeGrier said he heard loud banging on his locked bedroom door around 4:15 a.m. and that his son said, “You’re not going to scare me.” He said his son tried to bust the door open, but he kept him from doing so and called police.
The father said he called Jones, who lived a floor below, and warned her that his son was a “little irate” and not to open the door unless police arrived. He said Jones told him she saw his son outside with a baseball bat.
When police arrived, Antonio LeGrier said he heard Jones yell, “Whoa, Whoa Whoa!” He said he heard gunshots as he made his way down from the second floor and then saw his son and Jones lying in the foyer.
“I identified myself as the father and I held my hands out,” he said.
Jones’ daughter, Latisha Jones, told the Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune that she woke up when she heard gunshots. She said she walked to the front door and saw her mother bleeding on the ground.
Antonio LeGrier said police later told him that Quintonio LeGrier was shot seven times, and that he had called 911 before his father did.
Chicago police on Saturday afternoon referred Associated Press requests for additional comment to the Independent Police Review Authority, the city’s main police oversight agency. IPRA spokesman Larry Merritt said the agency was investigating an officer-involved shooting but said it was “very early on in the investigation” and he couldn’t release further details. Autopsies, which would determine how many times LeGrier and Jones were shot, were not scheduled Saturday, medical examiner’s office spokeswoman Becky Schlikerman said.
It is not clear from the initial police statement whether there are any video recordings of the shooting.
Antonio LeGrier told the Sun-Times that his son had emotional problems after spending most of his childhood in foster care. “Did it warrant him getting shot and killed? I don’t believe it,” the elder LeGrier said.
LeGrier described his son as a “whiz kid” and said he was home on holiday break from Northern Illinois University, where he majored in electrical engineering technology.
LeGrier’s mother, Janet Cooksey, told the Chicago Tribune that despite her son’s issues, police didn’t have to react the way they did.
“We’re thinking the police are going to service us, take him to the hospital. They took his life,” said Cooksey, who was not present at the time of the shooting.
The release of the McDonald shooting video has led to protests, the forced resignation of former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and calls from residents for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to step down.
Cooksey said she wants a personal apology from Emanuel for what happened to her only child.
“Are we gonna get protected or is the police just gonna keep taking lives?” Cooksey said. “I mean, who’s gonna answer these questions?”
Emanuel’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from the AP.
Bettie Jones’ brother, Melvin Jones, told the Tribune his sister celebrated “an excellent” Christmas at her apartment Friday with about 15 other relatives.
He said she lived there with her boyfriend and was the mother of four daughters and a son ranging in age from 19 to 38.
“There are so many questions and no answers,” Melvin Jones said. “I’m numb right now. Right now there’s a whole lot of anger, a whole lot of tears. … I don’t have time to feel. I have a funeral to prepare.”
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This story has been corrected to show the first name of the 19-year-old killed is Quintonio instead of Quientonio, the last name is LeGrier instead of Legrier and the first name of the 55-year-old killed is Bettie instead of Betty.
41 responses to “Chicago police: Woman accidentally killed in by officer fire”
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No mention of body cams by Chicago PD. Refusal to give information about the officer’s background, etc. Looking like another Chicago attempt at a cover up. Lucky for us the Feds have them under a microscope. More Chicago PD heads could be rolling. Stay tuned.
You have an vested interest with your body cam stocks?
No invest in data storage…
This reporter needs to invest in a book on grammar….Killed in by officer fire??????
Yes marcus, I agree. What ever happened to editing? (spell check is not the same as actually looking at what was written and fixing it)
I think the cops should carry bats too.
Batman Back Pack?
Yeah like the old days, 26 inch batons, or PR 24s. Work outs, lots of bicep, triceps, softball practice( hit a softball with a 26 baton ) then go to work and see how many swings before guy goes down. Lots of women cops got there batons taken away, beat partner just shot them…..lol. ah the good days.
Yeah! like in the good days of now where the kids busy tapping the smartphone, and sitting on their flabby rears from a lack of exercise.
Have you ever tried to hit a softball with a spinning (rather than using a power stroke) PR-24? That sounds interesting. I think I’ll go try fungoing a few, if I can find a softball around here.
The PR 24 was kind of problematic. One needed a great deal of training to be safe and effective. The ASP is pretty effective and not too difficult to deploy.
“Cooksey, who was not present at the time of the shooting, told the Chicago Tribune that her son had been dealing with mental issues, but said police didn’t have to react the way they did. She said her son “didn’t have a gun. He had a bat.” The mother sounds so sure of the guilt of the police, even though she wasn’t there. You can bet the media will play up the race card though.
Good post. Those of us who choose to inhabit a fact-based universe will find little support from the drive-by press and their penchant for sensationalism.
Right. Drive-by sensationalism. If that had been your mother standing behind the guy with the bat, you’d still never bat an eye… Or, did your fact-based universe miss the part about the unarmed woman who was shot dead?
We all have our own mental issues to deal with, but we don’t go around, violating others space.
Well, some of us have mental issues!
and i didn’t eat any tacos today
Chicago police do seem trigger happy for whatever reason. Every week brings a new story of a black teen killed by police.
Every week brings reports of multiple Blacks killing Blacks in Chicago…..
There are also a lot of sniper-type killing of police officers.
So what’s the percentage of blacks vs non-blacks that live in Chicago? That will tell you the whole story.
University of Chicago is where some of the best studies and research on deviatent behavior comes from, reason lots of poor black people packed into housing projects, natural lab. Add segregated communities by race, cultural variable. Would you want to be s cop in lab study…unprotected?
Ok, this guy had mental issues and a bat. I can only imagine what happened.
A bat can do you in just as well as a firearm.
Some people have no plans to see the new year of, 2016?
Don’t know all the details but anyone facing a “combative” 19-year old with “mental issues” has a right to protect themselves.
I’d be curious about who/how shot the 55-year old mother of five…
So much violence in Chicago.
Waiting for the next protesting against the police… which I hope will be peaceful.
“I’d be curious about who/how shot the 55-year old mother of five…”
“A Chicago police officer responding to a domestic disturbance call Saturday accidentally shot and killed a 55-year-old woman..”
Dude, it’s in the very first sentence.
Let’s have a riot!
Nah, just another great fire, like the one they had in 1871, blame the cow.
was thinking the same thing. the cows are guilty. and they want us to eat mor chikin. phhpth!
Don’t cook tonight. Call chicken delight.
Did eating out have any coupons back in, 1871?
Quiet Riot?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chicago-police-kill-quintonio-legrier-bettie-jones-families-outraged/ This news article has more information.
So a “BAT” is not a deadly weapon when used in that way? The bottom line is: do you want to go home tonight after your on duty shift or not? You bring a bat, I’ll bring my gun.
There seem to be no grounds to kill Ms. Bettie Jones. Can we get this one right?
Washington Post: “The landscape of police shootings is surprisingly thinly explored. The FBI is charged with keeping statistics on such shootings, but a Post analysis of FBI data showed that fewer than half of the nation’s 18,000 police departments report their incidents to the agency.
The Post documented well more than twice as many fatal shootings this year [nearly 1,000] as the average annual tally reported by the FBI over the past decade. The FBI and the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics now acknowledge that their data collection has been deeply flawed. FBI Director James B. Comey called his agency’s database “unacceptable.” Both agencies have launched efforts to create new systems for documenting fatalities.”
Is this story trending because no one can figure out what the hell is going on when they read the headline?
Always be on your best behavior. We don’t need any friendly fire passing over our heads.
There were more fatal police shootings in the US in the first 24 days of 2015 than there were in England and Wales combined over the past 24 years.
The conclusion? Their crooks have manners.