By Dave Newbart, Lisa Donovan, Lauren Guy and Kara Spak
Chicago Sun-Times
CHICAGO — Trying to stop a knife-wielding man from killing an elderly man at one of the Loop’s busiest corners at midday Thursday, a Chicago Police officer opened fire -- killing the suspect and striking a fellow officer, Police Supt. Jody Weis said.
The friendly fire bullet hit the officer in the vest -- but didn’t penetrate, Weis said.
The officer was taken to a hospital for observation and was said to be in good condition.
Law enforcement sources said the man killed by police was carrying a passport that identified him as a 45-year old Northwest Side resident. Authorities were still trying to reach his family Thursday night to confirm his identity.
The shooting happened just before 1 p.m. after police went to Randolph and Wabash for a report of a “man who was menacing people with a knife,” Weis said. Officers tried to subdue him, giving him a blast of pepper spray, but it had no effect.
Witnesses Angelo Watts and Roosevelt Daring saw the man backing away from police officers and waving a knife at them.
“He was saying ‘Get back’ to the police,” said Daring. Six or seven officers, with guns drawn, were shouting, “Put down the weapon! Drop the weapon!” Watts said.
The knife-wielding man headed west on Randolph to State Street, where he “grabbed an elderly gentleman and held the knife to him,” Weis said.
When he grabbed the hostage in front of the Loehmann’s clothing store at the northeast corner of State and Randolph, police fired several shots from point blank range, striking the knife-wielding man in the chest and legs, witnesses said.
Said one witness: “I saw the cops telling him to stop. He didn’t stop, and they shot him.”
Weis said one officer tried to disarm the man, but was hit by a bullet after his partner opened fire. The elderly man was not injured, Weis said.
“He was trying to murder the innocent, elderly gentleman and with that escalation of force our officers were forced to engage him,” Weis said “They were in very close proximity. The officer who was hit in the vest had actually had [his] hands on the individual -- trying to disarm him. The [second] officer in fear of both his partner’s life and the innocent victim, he used his weapon.”
Watts and Daring said the man appeared to be older, white and was wearing a dirty black coat. They estimated he was 6 foot, 6 inches tall.
The officer hit by the gunfire was a 41-year-old man with 11 years on the force, said Weis, who visited him in the hospital and said he was doing well. “The vest was not penetrated. He was not hurt other than [he’s] probably going to have [a] bad bruise in the morning on his ribs,” Weis said.
The officer who opened fire was identified as a 40-year-old man and a 16-year veteran.
Records show the man identified on the passport carried by the knife-wielding man pleaded guilty in 2007 to two counts of misdemeanor assault on the CTA. He served two days in jail.
Weis said detectives were still trying to piece together what happened. “It probably is an incident of someone that’s an aggressive panhandler and then it just kept escalating,” Weis said.
The area was cordoned off with yellow police tape, stopping traffic for hours as officers continued to process the crime scene and search for footage from surveillance cameras.
Caprice Hatcher, 27, of South Shore, was heading to the Red Line when she saw officers pointing guns at the man as he threatened the elderly man.
“I mean it was horrible,” Hatcher said. “And it could have been worse -- all these people around here? Somebody else could have been hit. Somebody completely innocent.”
Weis responded to bystanders concerned about officers shooting at the close of a typically busy lunch hour in the Loop. “The officers were right on top of the individual. It’s a judgment call that you’re asking questions on right now that the officers have to make in a tenth of a second. What their job was was to try to protect the life of that individual and they did. That man is alive now because of those officers.
“That’s the dangers of police work. We had someone who was trying to murder someone right in front of two officers. . . . Fortunately, no one was hit other than the person who was trying to murder an individual and the officer -- and thank God he had body armor on and he was fine.”
Copyright 2009 Chicago Sun-Times