Family of Grandmother Killed by Police in a 'Hail of Bullets' Sues City of Chicago
The family of Bettie Jones, a 55-year-old grandmother who was killed by police in late December, filed a lawsuit against the city of Chicago on Monday.
Jones was shot to death by a Chicago Police Department officer responding to a domestic dispute, according to The Chicago Tribune. Officers had been called after an argument involving Jones’ neighbor, 19-year-old college student Quintonio LeGrier, who was also killed by police that night. The suit reads:
Bettie Ruth Jones faced a hail of bullets being fired by an on-duty Chicago Police Department officer at and in the direction of her home and her, with bullets going through the doorway, and through the walls of her home where (one of her daughters and others) were located and at risk of injury and death.”
Since her death, the Chicago police department admitted that the shooting was “accidental.” Another lawsuit was filed by the family of LeGrier, who allege that the officer was 20 feet outside the building when he shot into it, killing both of them.
The Jones lawsuit also alleges that when Jones’ daughter asked a police officer for help, he replied by saying that “her mother was dead and she needed to ‘get over it.’”
The suit comes in the wake of a string of missteps and embarrassments for the Chicago Police Department, from the death of Laquan McDonald to an investigation over civil rights violations by the U.S. Justice Department.
