Two Chicago police officers were shot, one fatally, Monday afternoon by a man they had arrested and placed in their squad car, expecting to be led to a drug house, police said.
The shootings took place in the parking lot of Fair Play Foods, 2200 S. Western Ave. Both officers were shot in the back of the head, apparently while sitting in their unmarked squad car with their prisoner in the back seat, according to police.
Killed was Patrolman Eddie Jones Jr., 28, of the South Side. Jones was married and had been on the Police Department since 1986. He was pronounced dead at Cook County Hospital at 5:23 p.m.
In critical but stable condition at Mt. Sinai Hospital Medical Center was Patrolman Dennis Dobson, 30, a resident of the Ogden Park neighborhood on the South Side.
Police Supt. LeRoy Martin said the assailant had a handgun ”secreted on his person.”
The killer escaped with a .45 caliber handgun taken from the ”slain officer,” the Police Department reported, and was the subject of a massive manhunt on the West Side Monday night.
Police identified the man they were seeking as Alexis Green, also known as Tony Brown. He was described as a black male, 5 feet 6 inches tall and 140 pounds, wearing a three-quarter-length ”Starter” brand jacket, no hat and possibly driving a brown 1973 Oldsmobile. Green was believed to have a tattoo of the letters ”A G” above his left elbow.
The officers had arrested the man for a narcotics violation, according to Tina Vicini, a spokeswoman for the Police Department. Apparently, before the officers took the man to the police station, he agreed to show them a ”dope house,” Vicini said.
The officers were about to take their prisoner to the drug house when they were shot, Vicini said.
According to John Dineen, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, the officers had booked Green at the station and fingerprinted him and then brought him back out on the street.
”They took him in, but it seems they were offered something better,”
Dineen said. ”You always try to move up to something bigger, something better. You follow up any way you can. That`s the way the game is played.”
Martin said the officers probably had frisked the suspect, but missed the gun. Vicini said the officers did not handcuff the man.
Dr. Phillip Zaret, director of emergency medicine at Mt. Sinai, said a large caliber bullet, perhaps .45 caliber, entered the back of Dobson`s scalp and lodged in the right side of his neck.
”He is alert and in good spirits. He has not been informed of his partner`s death. It appears that there will be no neurological damage, no paralysis. The bullet is lodged in the neck, and we may well elect to leave the bullet in place,” said Zaret.
The doctor said if the bullet had entered a centimeter or two to the left, Dobson could have been killed or paralyzed.
Dobson is married and the father of three children.
Mayor Richard Daley and Martin went to both hospitals to speak to relatives of the officers.
Daley said Jones ”was killed in the line of duty. . . . My condolences to the Jones family.”
At Mt. Sinai, Daley said, ”Right now I ask the public to pray for the Dobsons. This is part of the problem of drugs and guns. This country should do something about the problem.”
The shootings took place at 4:41 p.m. but were not immediately noticed by many people in the busy neighborhood until as many as 50 police officers converged on the scene along with ambulances and a fire truck.
Jones and Dobson were tactical unit officers from the Marquette Police District. They were in plain clothes and driving an unmarked car.
Vicini said they had arrested the suspect earlier Monday at 16th Street and Kedzie Avenue for possession of a controlled substance. ”It is standard procedure to frisk a person when they are under arrest,” said Vicini.
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She said the parking lot at Western and Cermak was on the way to the alleged drug house, but she did not know why the police officers stopped in that lot.
The suspect`s last known addresses were 1540 S. Sawyer Ave. and 1454 N. Mayfield Ave. Police also said he was known to have acquaintances in Markham and in Harvey.
Shortly after the shooting, police converged on the area around 21st Street and Sawyer Avenue after the suspect was reported to have been seen there. Metra commuter trains on the Burlington Northern tracks were delayed while police searched the area.
Later, scores of officers searched around 16th Street and Kedzie Avenue on foot and in cars, in pairs and in groups of three and four. The officers looked in empty cars and abandoned buildings where someone could hide and stopped anyone who fit the description of the suspect. Sixteenth and Kedzie is near one of the suspect`s former addresses.
Officers assigned to the tactical units, as Jones and Dobson were, sometimes call themselves the ”blue jean police” because of their manner of dress.
Tactical unit officers handle many of the most dangerous assignments. They regularly respond to calls regarding guns and violence and do much less of the routine police work.
About 28 tactical unit officers are assigned to each of the city`s 25 police districts.
Last July, Martin said, ”Our officers are coming under fire far more frequently than any other times since I`ve been on the force.” He attributed the violence to the drug trade.
The last Chicago police officer killed was John Martin, 31, who was gunned down in July near his home. Martin was off duty and had confronted a vandal who was tampering with a neighbor`s car when he was killed.
Last May, two Chicago police officers were shot to death on the Far West Side. Officers Raymond Kilroy and Gregory Hauser were shot in a garage while responding to a domestic dispute. Roman Chavez, 22, was charged with their murders and is awaiting trial.
Monday night, Shari Jones, the wife of the officer slain earlier in the day, was at Cook County Hospital with other relatives. Her mother, Dorothy Hearn, described the marriage of her daughter.
Hearn said her daughter was 15 and Jones was 18 when they met in the Halsted Bowl bowling alley at 123rd and Halsted Streets.
Jones and his wife were supposed to meet at the same bowling alley again Monday. Hearn was picking up her daughter to take her to the bowling alley when they received word that Officer Jones had been shot.
”She said this is what he wanted to do,” said Hearn. ”She just told me that upstairs. Ever since he was young, he wanted to be a policeman. She didn`t want him to do it.”
Hearn added, ”She was always after him about wearing that vest,”
referring to bulletproof vests that Chicago police officers are now required to wear.
Martin said both officers were wearing their vests, ”but they suffered head wounds.”
Jones was a graduate of Leo High School and was ”a perfect man, a perfect son,” said his mother, Betty. Jones has a 10-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, relatives said.
Dobson is a graduate of Lindblom High School where he had played on the football and basketball teams, said his father, Hugher L. Dobson, who was at Mt. Sinai.
Dobson is married to Sherry Dobson, 30. They have two boys, Dennis II, 7, and Deon, 5, and a daughter, Shante, 10, who is Dobson`s stepdaughter.