By Frank Main
The Chicago Sun-Times
CHICAGO — Did Rachelle Jackson help Pierre Mangun steal a handgun from an injured cop?
A federal jury decided she didn’t -- awarding Jackson $7.9 million last week in a lawsuit claiming she was wrongfully jailed for more than 10 months.
Jackson sued the City of Chicago after a judge acquitted her and Mangun of criminal charges. They were accused of conspiring to steal a pistol from an officer knocked unconscious in a car accident on the South Side in 2002.
Mangun’s relative, Byron Mangun, was convicted of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon after he tried to sell the officer’s gun. He was sentenced to six years in prison.
But Jackson and Pierre Mangun denied any connection to the stolen gun. And Jackson said she did not know Pierre Mangun before the wreck.
“Here is a woman who risked her life to save a police officer’s life and look what they did to her,” said her attorney, Daniel S. Alexander.
The city is considering an appeal.
The accident happened in November 2002 when a car ran a stop sign and broadsided a squad car driven by Officer Kristen Villanueva.
Jackson said she came to the aid of Villanueva’s dazed partner, Karen Brogan.
“I scooped her up, put my hand behind her to brace her neck and hold her up,” Jackson said in a deposition.
But the city argued Jackson put Brogan in a full-Nelson wrestling hold, not how a good samaritan would handle an accident victim.
Brogan claimed Jackson unsuccessfully tried to steal her gun and badge. But Brogan admitted that she did not report an attempted theft to responding officers. In both the civil and criminal trials, Jackson’s attorneys attacked Brogan’s hazy memory.
Jackson, a waitress at the time of the accident, plans to open her own restaurant with the jury award, Alexander said. She works as a nursing assistant for a woman with multiple sclerosis and became a licensed pharmacy technician last year, he said.
Copyright 2008 The Chicago Sun-Times