Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she ordered the police department to capture and bring to justice anyone who provided the 13-year-old with the handgun he was carrying last week when he was fatally shot by a police officer
CHICAGO – Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Monday she directed the Chicago Police Department to capture and bring to justice anyone who gave a 13-year-old boy the handgun he was carrying last week when he was fatally shot by a police officer.
Adam Toledo was shot in the chest after fleeing agents in the Little Village neighborhood shortly before 3 a.m. on March 29. He died on the spot and a weapon was recovered.
“We will find the person who put the gun in Adam’s hand,” Lightfoot said during a press conference in the West Side neighborhood. “An adult put a gun in the hand of a child, an impressionable child who should not receive lethal force.”
Police Superintendent David Brown and the department’s chief of detectives “will use all resources to track the origins of this weapon through tracing, fingerprinting and DNA and any other means,” Lightfoot said.
The Civilian Office of Police Responsibility, which is investigating the shooting, has said it would first release the images from the body camera of the shooting to the boy’s family and then to the public.
According to police, officers were sent to Little Village after the department’s ShotSpotter technology detected the sound of eight shots. When they arrived, Toledo and a 21-year-old man ran away. While chasing the teen, there was an “armed confrontation” during which the officer shot him once in the chest.
The 21-year-old was arrested for a crime of resisting arrest.
The mayor and Brown, who also spoke at the press conference, declined to respond when asked if the boy shot the officer before they shot him in the chest.
But the mayor strongly suggested that the teenager may have been involved in gangs before tonight and that a gang member gave him the gun.
“Gangs take advantage of our most vulnerable and corrupt these young minds with promises of familiarity and profit,” he said.
“None of us should accept that we have adults here and all over Chicago taking advantage of vulnerable teenage children,” saying it is everyone’s duty to give these children the love and support they need.
“That’s how we diminish the attractiveness of gang life,” he said.
The mayor and superintendent also addressed a recent “official security alert” within the department that warned officers that factions on a street gang had instructed members to shoot Chicago police vehicles without mark as retaliation for the teen’s death.
“The danger to officers every day is real,” Lightfoot said, citing statistics showing that 79 city agents were fired last year compared to 22 the year before.
He said he hoped the gang members weren’t “stupid enough” to shoot at police. Brown also urged calm, noting a statement made by the boy’s mother, Elizabeth Toledo over the weekend.
“Adam was a sweet, loving boy,” he said. “I would not want anyone else to be injured or die in his name.”
Brown also explained why Adam’s age and name were not disclosed until the few days after his death, saying the man who was with Adam the night he died told police a false name when asked to identify the teen. Brown said Adam’s fingerprints did not match any of the police databases.
Brown said Adam had fled at least twice in the days before his death. Adam’s mother reported his disappearance on March 26, but the next day she told police she had returned. Investigators looking for reports of recently missing missing people contacted Adam’s mother after the shooting and she told them she had not seen him in “several days,” but had not reported him again.
She identified her body Wednesday at the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Lightfoot said the boy’s death would lead to a new policy of persecution of the feet, although he did not elaborate, saying that only police persecutions are very dangerous for officers, persecuted and others in the area.
He promised that a new policy would exist before the start of the summer.
Lawyers for Adam’s family said Monday evening that they were requesting quick meetings with police to get evidence of the case and that they had not yet received a confirmed time to see police footage.
“We will not let the anguish and emotion of the moment interfere with our goal of getting the facts,” said a joint statement by lawyers Adeena Weiss Ortiz and Joel Hirschhorn. “We will deal with all public statements about the circumstances of Adam’s death once we have the facts before us.”
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