A North Side man, described by neighbors as a recluse, reportedly shot and killed his landlord and a Chicago police officer Thursday, then barricaded himself in a neighbor`s house while holding a 74-year-old woman hostage.
The man, John Pasch Jr., 57, of 1429 W. Lill Ave., exchanged dozens, possibly hundreds, of shots with police in the first hour of the long siege, forcing police to evacuate the area.
Pasch later ignored two televised pleas from Police Supt. Fred Rice, who urged him to surrender and promised that he would not be harmed.
Police observing Pasch through field glasses Thursday night said they could see him in the house, at 1427 W. Lill, next door to his apartment, watching television with a shotgun across his lap.
As far as police could determine, the hostage was unharmed, Rice said. But other officers said Pasch may have killed two of the woman`s dogs, which were in the house. They said it appeared that two dogs` bodies were thrown out a window.
The woman lives in the house where Pasch was barricaded. Her sister, who also lives in the house, escaped being taken hostage by the arrival of the police.
Pasch, a 300-pounder who police said was a tool and die maker and amateur gunsmith, is accused of fatally shooting his landlord, Leslie Shearer, 45, of 419 Greenwood Dr., near Barrington, and Officer Richard Clark, 48, of the Belmont District tactical unit, an 18-year police veteran.
Both men were married, and each had three children, police said. Shearer`s children range in age from 8 years to 6 months. Clark`s children include a 22-year-old son and a teenage daughter.
Clark was the first Chicago police officer killed in the line of duty since July 12, when Patrolman Wayne G. King, 53, was slain. Another officer, Patrolman Rudolph Schaffer, 39, was shot to death on Feb. 1, but he was off duty at the time.
Witnesses said Pasch shot Shearer as he stood in the 1400 block of Lill Avenue about 3:15 p.m. Thursday. Clark, one of the first officers on the scene, was shot as he approached the house in which Pasch was barricaded.
A 52-year-old woman who lives across the street said her 13-year-old granddaughter was looking out the front window of their home and saw Pasch shoot Shearer.
”I can`t believe what`s happening on the street, a man was just shot,”
she said her granddaughter told her. The girl had just returned home from Prescott Elementary School, 1632 W. Wrightwood Ave., where she is an 8th grader.
The grandmother said she went to the window and saw Shearer standing near the gangway next to his building clutching his abdomen. She said he started walking down the gangway when Pasch, standing a short distance away with a handgun, shot him again.
Shearer was pronounced dead at St. Joseph Hospital with bullet wounds in the abdomen and head.
After the second shot, the woman said, another woman–later identified as Mary Wagner, 69, sister of the hostage–came out of 1427 Lill, looked down into the gangway and shouted, ”Oh, my God, there`s a dead man in my yard. Call the police.”
The witness said that Pasch ran from the gangway carrying a shotgun, grabbed Wagner and tried to wrestle her into her home. She said Wagner kicked, fought and screamed for help. When Pasch heard police sirens, he let the woman go free, a witness said.
Several area residents said they called the police when they heard the shots. The grandmother said that as Pasch and Wagner fought on the front porch of her home, the wail of a police siren could be heard.
She said Pasch shoved Wagner down the front steps of the house and then locked himself inside. Wagner`s sister, already inside the house, apparently was taken hostage at that time, police said.
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The woman said that she and other area residents warned police that Pasch was armed with a shotgun.
She said that the officer later identified as Clark got out of his squad car with his service revolver in his hand. She said he was partially sheltered behind a parked car and looking toward the house when he was felled by a shot fired through the front window.
”The officer received a full blast from a shotgun in the right side of the face,” Rice said.
Within seconds, scores of additional police were at the scene exchanging gunfire with Pasch. One resident said the shots were so close together they sounded like a string of firecrackers going off.
Police said Pasch apparently ran from one end of the house to the other, exchanging shots with officers trying to approach the building from both front and rear.
Several residents of the area who were on the sidewalk had to duck behind cars and trees to avoid the gunfire.
Children at the Christopher House Daycare Center, at the corner of Lill and Greenview Avenue, were temporarily trapped in that building, but police later led them to safety.
Two adults and a boy, driving past the scene in a car, were trapped by the exchange of shots and ducked down on the car`s floor. They were able to drive away after police positioned a squadrol between their auto and the house from which Pasch was firing.
Police also used a squadrol to get the mortally wounded Clark into a Fire Department ambulance.
Paul Motisi and Paul Phalin, fire department paramedics, said that because of the gunshots, they had to stop their ambulance several doors away from the scene while police brought Clark to them.
The paramedics said they could not detect a pulse for Clark when he reached the ambulance. But they added that they administered first aid and hospital physicians spent another hour working on Clark before pronouncing him dead.
Authorities said that after barricading himself in the house, Pasch, who had no police record, phoned the 911 emergency number to issue threats against his hostage and the officers outside the house.
In one call, police said, Pasch threatened to kill the hostage. In another, he said he had armor-piercing ammunition and hoped to kill another police officer. In a third, he said he was prepared to explode bombs inside the house if police tried to force their way in.
Police said Pasch told them he had gasoline and other materials with which to make the bombs. They said he also boasted that the doors to the house were wired to set off explosions.
Police said that when they phoned Pasch he hung up on them. Efforts by his mother and sister to talk to him were unsuccessful, police said.
The shootings brought scores of police officers plus the police department`s heavy weapons truck, called the ”War Wagon,” to the quiet residential street just west of Southport Avenue.
The department`s hostage-barricade-terrorist team, headed by Lt. Jack Kennedy, sealed off the area while sniper teams were positioned on rooftops and behind cars.
Police received reports that Shearer, who owned the house at 1429 W. Lill, where Pasch has a basement apartment, had gone there Thursday afternoon to evict Pasch.
Brian Kelly, 30, a computer programer who lives in the building, said he was told that Pasch paid no rent and refused to allow Shearer into his apartment.
”The landlord had never been inside the apartment since he bought the building in 1978,” Kelly said. ”When my landord bought the building, John came with it.”
Police, who forced their way into Pasch`s apartment, said they found several empty boxes of ammunition plus several sniper scopes and a .22 rifle. The empty boxes of ammunition led police to conclude that Pasch was heavily armed and prepared for a long siege.
Shortly after Clark was brought to the hospital, his wife, Erica, arrived with Clark`s brother, James Clark, a recently retired Belmont District officer. She fainted shortly after entering the building.
Associates of Shearer said that in addition to owning the house on Lill, he was in the import-export business and had recently returned home from a business trip.
A neighbor said that Shearer and his wife, Sally, moved to the Barrington area from Chicago about five years ago. ”He was a nice guy,” the neighbor said.