By Rosemary Regina Sobol
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — Newly released video shows Chicago police officers running toward a suspect, then ducking behind fences and crouching on porches as more than 25 shots are fired between police and a man believed to have just shot his pregnant girlfriend on the West Side in November.
“He’s down, he’s down, he’s down,” an officer yells after the exchange of gunfire with Richard Grimes, 33, in the 4500 block of West Washington Boulevard close to midnight on Nov. 27.
Other officers start shouting it as they rush toward the gangway where Grimes was shot.
The videos, much of it from body cameras, were released Friday by the Independent Police Review Authority as it continues to investigate the shooting. None of the footage shows the shooting itself, though some of it is from cameras worn by officers running to the scene, then checking on their partners.
“You OK?” an officer asks.
“Yea,” she answers. “You alright?”
“Yea,” the officer says. “As soon as I got to right there. . .they’re shooting. Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop.”
“I know, I saw you jump.”
The shooting started out as a call about a domestic battery in the 4600 block of West Adams Street around 11:30 p.m. Officers found Grimes’ pregnant, 24-year-old girlfriend shot in the abdomen. She survived but the couple’s baby did not.
Grimes fled the home and was spotted near Madison Street and Kenton Avenue, Deputy Chief Al Nagode said at the time. Grimes raised his gun and fired a shot at an officer, he said.
The officer called for backup, and police set up a perimeter around the surrounding blocks, authorities said. Grimes was discovered in the gangway and again fired at police, authorities said. Officers returned fire.
Police said they recovered a semi-automatic handgun at the scene. Two officers were hurt, one of them suffering a possible graze wound from a bullet, Nagode said.
One of the videos begins with two officers driving to the scene. As they pull up and park on a sidewalk, an officer says over the radio, “He’s running now.”
The officers run past other parked squad cars, then turn down a street and are just getting to a vacant lot when the shots are fired: A burst of about five, then as many as 15, then five more.
“Shots fired,” an officer radios. “Multiple shots fired. Multiple.”
“Watch the crossfire, everyone,” another officer warns. “Watch the crossfire.”
When they hear the suspect is down, the officers continue running toward the gangway. “Cop down?” a plainclothes officer asks as they pass. “Cop shot?”
In another video, an officer presses against a chain-link fence and shines a flashlight into an empty stairwell. “He went to the front of the building, bro,” a man on the street tells him.
By the time the officer turns the corner, the gunfire begins. “Careful. Careful. Careful,” an officer is heard saying.
In another video, closer to the shooting scene, an officer yells, “Who shot?”
“I shot,” an officer answers.
As they walk away, another officer stands over the body, stepping into blood as he gives out commands and waits for the ambulance. Grimes was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Other video, taken from a police camera above an intersection, shows officers initially showing up for the domestic battery call and then setting up the perimeter.
Around 11:30 p.m., a squad car with its blue lights flashing pulls up to a house, followed by a police SUV and then others. Officers rush out and begin shining flashlights outside the house and nearby.
About 11:35 p.m., at least one SUV, a detective in an unmarked car and other police leave the scene. A police van blocks traffic so no one can get to the shooting scene.
At 11:40 p.m., Chicago Fire Department ambulance 10 arrives. About 10 minutes later, a second ambulance slowly pulls up and then moves on to the scene.
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©2017 the Chicago Tribune