Chicago set to pay $5 million in killings
Police-involved shootings settled
Chicago — The city of Chicago is set to pay out more than $5 million to settle lawsuits filed by the families of two men killed in separate police-involved shootings, according to court and city documents.
The city council’s finance committee is scheduled to vote Monday on the city’s corporation counsel’s recommendation that they pay $3 million to the estate of Cedrick Chatman and $2.365 million to the estate of Darius Pinex, according to an agenda released Friday.
The unarmed Chatman, 17, was fatally shot by police in 2013 as he fled on foot soon after stealing a car. Video of the incident shows the teen running away from two plainclothes officers, who were responding to reports of a carjacking in progress when one of the officers fired upon him.
Officer Kevin Fry said in a deposition that he thought Chatman was holding a weapon and decided to fire because the teen turned his body slightly toward his partner as he was running away.
Chatman was, in fact, holding a black iPhone box that was allegedly stolen during the carjacking he had taken part in moments before his encounter with police.
In the second case, police were initially cleared last year in a civil lawsuit for the 2011 shooting of Pinex, 27, who was killed during a traffic stop.
The federal jury concluded Officer Raoul Mosqueda and Gildardo Sierra were justified in shooting Pinex, who tried to drive away from the scene.
But in January, U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang ordered a retrial after learning that an attorney for the city withheld important evidence from the plaintiff’s attorney. The officers said they stopped Pinex because his Oldsmobile Aurora fit the description of a car that other officers attempted to stop a few hours earlier after a shooting, an incident the officers said they heard about on police radio.
But the dispatch recording that was broadcast made no mention that the vehicle’s driver was armed or that the car was involved in a shooting.
Chang said that attorney Jordan Marsh, who resigned on the same day the new trial was ordered, learned about the recording before trial, but “intentionally concealed” its existence until days into the trial.
Marsh’s co-counsel, Thomas Aumann, also failed to make “reasonable inquiry” as required by discovery rules into the recording after it was requested by the plaintiff, Chang concluded. Aumann left his position several months before Chang ordered the retrial.