Cops shoot distraught off-duty firefighter
Pat Camden, a spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police, said the man had called his wife and told her he couldn’t “take it anymore.”
An off-duty Chicago firefighter was shot by police officers who thought he was pointing a gun at them Thursday afternoon in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood in what was described as an attempted “suicide by cop.”
The firefighter, who moments earlier had called his wife and told her he “couldn’t take it anymore,” made the sign of the cross, flung open the door of his SUV and got in a crouching position with both hands clutching a black object that he leveled at police officers in the parking lot of a CVS pharmacy at 103rd and Pulaski, said Pat Camden, a spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police. “The officers at that point opened fire, defending themselves,” Camden said.
The object in his hand was a wallet, Camden said.
The man’s wife had told police that her husband was depressed and had called to tell her he couldn’t “take it anymore,” Camden said. She told police he owned a gun, but she didn’t know if he had it with him.
Police were directed to search for the man at local pharmacies. He had been on medical leave from the fire department for at least a month.
Around 2 p.m. Thursday, police found him reclining in the driver’s seat of a black Ford SUV in a CVS parking lot, according to Camden and a law enforcement source.
As he was being moved to an ambulance with nine or 10 bullet wounds in his torso and limbs, he thanked a police sergeant “for doing what you had to do,” Camden said.
The firefighter, a father of two in his early 50s, was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was in critical but stable condition Thursday night.