The father of a 19-year-old man killed with a 55-year-old woman in what Chicago police said was an “accidental” shooting has sued the city, the family’s attorney told NBC News on Monday.
Antonio LeGrier filed the wrongful death suit lawsuit two days after his son, Quintonio LeGrier, a Northern Illinois University student, and Bettie Jones, the mother of five children, were killed Saturday, said Basileios Foutris, Antonio LeGrier’s attorney.
Police called Quintonio LeGrier a “combative subject,” but the suit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, said the young man was unarmed and “never posed a danger of threat or harm.” It called the shooting “excessive and unreasonable” and said officers “did not do anything to try to provide [Quintonio LeGrier] with medical care.”
The suit said authorities have recovered a video of at least part of the incident, although it doesn’t describe what could possibly be learned from it.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel cut short a family trip to Cuba after the incident, in which Chicago police said Jones was “accidentally struck and tragically killed” while officers responded to a domestic disturbance.
The Cook County medical examiner’s office ruled the deaths homicides.
Both Jones and LeGrier were black. They were among three people shot by police in Chicago in less than 12 hours; later Saturday, officers responded to an “assault in progress” and shot an armed man, according to the Chicago Police Department.
The use of force by Chicago police has been a hot-button issue since the recent release of a video showing an officer shooting black teen Laquan McDonald 16 times in 2014. Emanuel ordered the Independent Police Review Authority to work with the Chicago Police Department after the weekend shootings to review how officers are trained in responding to mental health crisis calls. The U.S. Justice Department announced an investigation into Chicago police practices earlier this month, which will “focus on CPD’s use of force, including racial, ethnic and other disparities in use of force, and its systems of accountability.”
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