Chicago Police Killings of Man, Elderly Woman Ruled Homicides

Embattled Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel will cut short his family vacation in Cuba and head home Tuesday after a police shooting Saturday that claimed two lives, one of them a woman who law enforcement admits was killed accidentally by an officer.

Janet Cooksey says her 19-year-old son, Quintonio LeGrier, was a college honors student studying engineering who recently had been dealing with some mental health issues, reports CBS News correspondent Anna Werner. Janet Cooksey, center, the mother of Quintonio LeGrier, is comforted by family and friends during a news conference to speak out about Saturday’s shooting death of her son by the Chicago police, on Sunday, Dec. 27, …

The fatal shootings were the first by a Chicago Police officer since the city released video of the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald, a black 17-year-old who was shot 16 times by a white police officer.

The officer, Jason Van Dyke, was charged with first-degree murder just a few hours before the video was released in late November – more than a year after the shooting.

“I’ve never seen this kind of detachment in the years I’ve been fighting, whether I got along the mayor or not”, Sharpton said. According to the police department, the officers were confronted by a “combative subject”, prompting an officer to fire his weapon. Bettie Jones, a 55-year-old grandmother, was also fatally shot by accident in the incident.

“I identified myself as the father and I held my hands out”, said Antonio LeGrier, the father, to the Chicago Sun Times.

Police have said they were responding to a domestic dispute and that Jones was accidentally hit by gunfire.

However, attorney Larry Rogers Jr, representing Jones’s family, said at a prayer vigil on Sunday that there may be a video from a house under construction across the street, along with possible police footage.

The identity of police involved in shootings is generally withheld from the public until after the completion of a review of the incident by the City of Chicago Independent Police Review Authority.

The fatal police shootings occurred while the Chicago Police Department is being scrutinized by the Justice Department, which has opened a wide-ranging investigation into whether the department’s practices contribute to civil rights violations.

“We’re thinking the police are going to service us, take him to the hospital”.

McDonald’s and other high-profile police killings drove hundreds of protesters to block Chicago’s retail district on Black Friday, the U.S.’s post-Thanksgiving sales event.

Among the many unanswered questions: How many 911 calls were made?

Police dispatch radio traffic indicated Quintonio LeGrier was carrying a baseball bat and threatening his father when police were called.

The city’s Independent Police Review Authority is investigating the double police shooting, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office has said IPRA would share its evidence with the county prosecutor’s office.

“She wasn’t saying anything”, Jones said.

Where the DOJ inquiry into Chicago Police Department now stands.

Grieving relatives and friends of the two victims gathered Sunday to remember them and criticize city officials who they said had once again failed residents.

“We hope to hear from the president, President Obama – we are under siege”, said Pastor Ira Acree of the Greater St. John Bible Church.