By Joseph States
Pioneer Press Newspapers, Suburban Chicago
MUNDELEIN, Ill. — The Mundelein Police Department has released video from the shooting of Mary Alice Love, showing what occurred shortly before an officer shot and killed the 37-year-old Black woman.
Kevin O’Connor, the attorney for the Love family, did not respond to a request for comment. Last week, the family had made a list of demands, including the release of body camera footage, during a village board meeting.
Warning: This video contains graphic content
A related protest had also been potentially scheduled for Thursday. Whether the release of the body camera footage would change those plans was uncertain as of Tuesday.
Included in the Mundelein Police Department video is audio from two initial 911 calls, according to Police Chief Jason Seeley , who made several statements throughout the video.
In the first call, a woman tells a dispatcher that her daughter had “asked me to call the police so they can kill her.” The woman tells the dispatcher that her daughter is bipolar and “she don’t want to live anymore.”
The dispatcher says they’ll send rescue and police over, and the woman says that she doesn’t “want them to shoot her.”
“Why would that happen?” the dispatcher asks.
“That’s why she wants me to call you guys so you can kill her,” the woman responds.
A second call recording is of another woman saying her sister is having a mental episode. While they had called the “Lake County Crisis Center,” she was concerned with her mother being alone with the woman.
Police were dispatched for a report of a suicidal woman at about 5:57 p.m., Seeley said, and when they arrived on scene, spoke with a “concerned family member outside the home.”
In body camera footage, it’s a sunny day with blue skies in a Mundelein suburb. Officers approach the home and speak with an older woman at her door, who tells them her daughter is outside on the rear patio of the home.
“I need to know what you’re going to do,” the woman says to the officers as she stands behind her door
“We’re trying to figure out what’s going on,” one of the officers responds.
She asks them to talk inside, and they come in, one of the officers handing off a shield he had been carrying to another officer. When they walk to the back of the house, Love can be seen through the glass sliding door, sitting down on the patio.
One officer notes she has a knife, which the older woman says she hadn’t seen before. The officers begin trying to move the older woman away from the door, but when a second officer grabs her arm, she partially falls back onto a couch.
Love gets up and can be heard yelling. She swings open the door, and the officer fires four times. Love collapses, and her mother cries out several times before the body camera footage ends.
According to Seeley, Love was then brought to a nearby hospital and pronounced deceased. The moments of the shooting itself are played again, in slow motion, with graphics to show a knife Love was carrying. The graphics don’t seem to indicate the second knife mentioned in previous press releases.
Seeley says that the officer involved is currently on administrative leave, pending the results of the investigation. But, he is a department veteran with 18 years of experience with the Mundelein Police Department , Seeley said, including 4 ½ years serving as a patrol sergeant.
“We understand incidents like this raise questions with the community,” Seeley said. “As this investigation continues we remain committed to sharing information that is accurate, transparent and timely in coordination with investigators and the Lake County State’s Attorney’s office.”
State’s Attorney’s Office
The State’s Attorney’s Office sent out a statement in regard to the investigation. Illinois law requires outside police agencies to investigate all officer-involved shootings, and the Mundelein Police Department chose the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force as its outside agency.
When the investigation is complete, the task force will present its results to the State’s Attorney’s office, the statement said. Lake County requires a Coroner’s Inquest is done in every officer-involved shooting as part of the investigation. The inquest has not yet occurred in this case, so the investigation remains ongoing.
The statement noted that officer-involved shootings are counted as homicides by both the Coroner and the State’s Attorney. Homicide is a technical definition, the statement said, as opposed to “murder,” which is a homicide that is “not justified” and “thus unlawful.”
According to the statement, final reports and conclusions can be found on the State’s Attorney Police Accountability webpage for every case since 2015 — with the exception of the October 2020 case that was charged criminally in 2022.
Some additional information on cases being investigated by the Illinois State Police can be found at Police Accountability – Officer-Involved Investigations Dashboard.
“We regret all loss of life and recognize the profound impact that officer-involved shootings have on families, communities, and the law enforcement agencies involved. We extend our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones affected by this tragedy,” the office said in a statement.
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