Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot says she ordered the police department to seize the gun he provided to the 13-year-old boy last week and bring him to justice and bring him to justice.
CHICAGO – Mayor Lori Lightfoot said on Monday that she had instructed the Chicago Police Department to arrest and bring to justice a 13-year-old boy who carried the gun he was carrying last week when he was fatally shot through. a police officer was shot.
Adam Toledo was shot in the chest after running from officers in the Little Village area shortly before 3 a.m. on March 29. He died at the scene and a gun was recovered.
“We will find the person who put the gun in Adam’s hand,” Lightfoot told a Western Conference news conference. ‘An adult has put a gun in the hand of a child, a young child who is impressive, and who should not receive fatal force. ‘
Police Superintendent David Brown and the department’s detective chief will “use every source to trace the origin of this gun through detection, fingerprints and DNA and any other means,” Lightfoot said.
The Civil Office for Police Responsibility, which is investigating the shooting, said it would first disclose the camera footage of the shooting to the boy’s family and then the public.
According to police, officers were sent to Little Village after the department’s ShotSpotter technology noticed the sound of eight shots. Upon their arrival, Toledo and a 21-year-old man ran away. As he pursued the teenager, there was an ‘armed confrontation’ during which the officer shot him once in the chest.
The 21-year-old man was arrested on a charge of resisting arrest.
The mayor and Brown, who also spoke at the news conference, declined to answer when asked if the boy shot at the officer before being shot in the chest.
But the mayor strongly suggested that the teenager may have been involved in gangs before the evening and that a gang member gave him the gun.
“Gangs prey on our most vulnerable and spoil these young spirits with promises of familia and lucre,” she said.
“None of us should accept that we have adults here and in Chicago on vulnerable teenage boys,” and says it is everyone’s duty to give these children the love and support they need.
“This is how we reduce the lure of gang life,” she said.
The mayor and superintendent also addressed a recent ‘safety warning’ in the department that officers from a street gang had instructed members to shoot at unmarked Chicago police vehicles in retaliation for the teenager’s death.
“The danger to officers every day is real,” Lightfoot said, citing statistics showing that 79 officers were shot in the city last year, compared to 22 the previous year.
She said she hoped gang members would not be “foolish enough” to shoot at police. Brown also encouraged calm by pointing to a statement the boy’s mother, Elizabeth Toledo, made over the weekend.
“Adam was a sweet and loving boy,” she said. “He does not want anyone else to be injured or killed in his name.”
Brown also explained why Adam’s age and name were only revealed a few days after his death, saying that the man who was with Adam the night he was killed told police a false name when asked to identify the teenager. Brown said Adam’s fingerprints did not match any of the police’s databases.
Brown said Adam ran away at least twice in the days before his death. Adam’s mother reported him missing on March 26, but told police the next day that he had returned. Investigators who were constantly searching for reports of missing persons reached Adam’s mother after the shooting.
She identified his body Wednesday in the Cook County Medical Examining Office.
Lightfoot said the boy’s death would lead to a new foot-hunting policy, though she did not elaborate and only said that police chases are very dangerous for officers, those being chased and others in the area.
She promised that a new policy would be put in place before the start of summer.
Lawyers for Adam’s family said Monday night that they were requesting speedy meetings with police to get evidence in the case and had not yet been given a confirmed time to see the police footage.
“We are not going to interfere with the anxiety and emotion of the moment with our goal of obtaining the facts,” a joint statement from attorneys Adeena Weiss Ortiz and Joel Hirschhorn said. “We will discuss all public statements about the circumstances of Adam’s death once the facts are before us.”
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