Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot says she has ordered police to capture and bring to justice the person who gave the 13-year-old boy the gun he was carrying last week when he was fatally shot by a police officer.
CHICAGO – Mayor Lori Lightfoot said on Monday she ordered Chicago police to capture and bring to justice the person who gave a 13-year-old boy the gun he was carrying last week when he was fatally shot by a police officer .
Adam Toledo was shot in the chest after running away from officers in the Little Village neighborhood shortly before 3am on March 29. He died on the spot and a gun was found.
“We will find the person who put the gun in Adam’s hand,” Lightfoot said at a nearby news conference on the West Side. “An adult put a gun in the hand of a child, a young impressionable child who should not receive lethal force.”
Chief Superintendent of Police David Brown and the department’s detective will “use all means to trace the origin of this weapon through tracing, fingerprints and DNA and other means,” said Lightfoot.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which is investigating the shooting, said it would release camera images of the body of the shooting first to the boy’s family and then to the public.
Police said officers were sent to Little Village after the department’s ShotSpotter technology detected the sound of eight gunshots. When they arrived, Toledo and a 21-year-old man ran away. As he chased the teenager, there was an “armed confrontation” in which the officer shot him once in the chest.
The 21-year-old man was arrested on charges of resisting arrest.
The mayor and Brown, who also spoke at the press conference, declined to answer the question whether the boy shot the officer before being shot in the chest.
But the mayor strongly suggested that the teen might have been involved with gangs before that night and that a gang member gave him the gun.
“Gangs hunt down our most vulnerable and corrupt these young minds with promises of family and profit,” she said.
“None of us should accept that we have adults here and in Chicago who prey on vulnerable teenage boys,” saying that it is everyone’s duty to give these children the love and support they need.
“That’s how we diminish the appeal of gang life,” she said.
The mayor and superintendent also targeted a recent “security warning to officers” within the department to warn agents that factions of a street gang had ordered members to shoot unmarked Chicago Police vehicles in retaliation for the teen’s death.
“The danger to officers is real every day,” said Lightfoot. He cited statistics showing that 79 officers were shot in the city last year, compared to 22 the year before.
She said she hoped gang members wouldn’t be “foolish enough” to shoot at the police. Brown also urged calmness, pointing to a statement the boy’s mother, Elizabeth Toledo, made over the weekend.
“Adam was a sweet and loving boy,” she said. “He wouldn’t want anyone else to get hurt or die in his name.”
Brown also explained why Adam’s age and name were not released until a few days after his death, saying that the man who was with Adam the night he was killed had told police a false name when asked about the teen. to identify. Brown said Adam’s fingerprints didn’t match in any police database.
Brown said Adam had run 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 searched recently closed reports of missing persons contacted Adam’s mother after the shooting and she told them that she had not seen him “for several days” but had not reported him missing again.
She identified his body on Wednesday at the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Lightfoot said the boy’s death would result in a new policy of pursuit, although she did not elaborate, saying only that police pursuits are very dangerous for officers, those being chased, and others in the area.
She promised there would be a new policy before the beginning of the summer.
Lawyers for Adam’s family said Monday night that they asked for expedited meetings with the police to get evidence in the case and that they had not yet been given confirmed time to view the police footage.
“We will not let the fear and emotion of the moment interfere with our goal of getting the facts,” said a joint statement from lawyers Adeena Weiss Ortiz and Joel Hirschhorn. “We will deal with any public statements regarding the circumstances of Adam’s death as soon as we have the facts before us.”