Eric Smith’s once promising life apparently began to fall apart last October when he was beaten by Washington, D.C., police in a case of mistaken identity.
Police apologized, but Smith, deaf since infancy, sank into a deep, sometimes angry depression that forced him to drop out of college and return to his Joliet home. He was given to sudden outbursts after his return, according to family members.
Smith, who relatives said had developed a fear of police since his October encounter, died of police gunshots alongside the busy Stevenson Expressway in full view of passing motorists at the height of the evening rush hour Tuesday.
He died in front of his mother and grandmother, who had kept scrapbooks of his stellar athletic career that started in grade school and carried over into college–the same scrapbook that contained copies of newspaper articles of his 1995 beating and the subsequent police apology he received.
Smith died of multiple gunshot wounds after a struggle with two suburban Forest View police officers Tuesday. On Wednesday, many of the facts in the case remained in dispute, with Forest View police defending their actions as necessary and Smith’s family claiming excessive police force.
Until October, Eric Smith had been a promising college student at Gallaudet University, a Washington school for the deaf and hearing impaired. Prior to that, he attended the Illinois School for the Deaf in Jacksonville, Ill., where he excelled in football and wrestling.
But his run-in with Washington police apparently had a significant impact on his demeanor.
In that incident, Smith reportedly hailed a police car in the early morning hours to report the burglary of his apartment. The police, who were aware of Smith’s hearing disability, radioed for a translator, and while they waited, a known drug addict came upon the scene and shot and killed one of the policemen. That man was shot and killed by the other officer.
Police arriving on the scene reportedly mistook Smith as someone involved and beat him. He later received an official police apology, but, according to his mother and grandmother, he was never the same again.
“He was bitter. He just changed. His heart became cold and his whole attitude changed,” said his mother, Wanda Hogue, 37. His grandfather, L.B. Pruitte, agreed, saying: “He was real nervous and just about anything would upset him. If he said he wanted a roll for breakfast, and you got him a biscuit instead, he’d get angry.”
On Tuesday evening, Smith was in a car traveling along the Stevenson Expressway with his mother and his grandmother, Lillie Pruitte, 65. They were returning from a visit to a deaf counseling center in Chicago.
A family argument broke out when Smith decided he wanted to go back to Chicago, and his mother, who was driving, pulled off the road while they argued, family members said.
At one point, the mother threw the car keys onto the busy roadway to keep him from taking them and driving back to Chicago.
This dispute was taking place along a part of the highway adjacent to Forest View.
Tiny Forest View is a suburb of just 743 people that runs like a bowling alley along the Stevenson on the stretch between Chicago’s city limits and Summit. It has eight full-time police officers and 10 part-time officers.
Two of them–full-time Officer Robert Lawruk and part-time Officer Pete Bernal–were driving south in separate cars on the Stevenson when they reported over their radios that they were being flagged down by a woman whose car was parked diagonally off the expressway’s shoulder.
The officers “observed a violent situation which had escalated between Smith and another woman in a vehicle. Officers were there to assist those women who were being confronted by a 6-feet-1-inch tall, 270-pound man,” Forest View Police Chief Glenn David said Wednesday.
At one point, police said, Smith wandered out onto the roadway and was slightly sideswiped by a slowly moving car.
It seemed unclear, however, where police first confronted Smith–and what exactly took place. Forest View police said Smith attacked them. The mother and grandmother said the police attacked Smith.
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“Obviously even before our officers arrived, there was some sort of disturbance escalating in that vehicle,” Police Chief David said. “When officers were attacked, they were left with no alternative but to defend themselves.”
This is Smith’s mother’s version of what happened: “We did not wave the police over. . . . We all saw firsthand what happened and that’s what really, really makes me mad. The officer had his gun to Eric’s head while guiding him off the street. I ran over and said, `Please, don’t hurt him. Mace him, but don’t hurt him,’ “
Before there was shooting, however, there was a struggle.
Police said that Smith had Bernal on the ground and that Lawruk beat him on the back of the legs with his baton. Then, with Bernal shouting that the man was trying to get his weapon, Lawruk fired several shots, one apparently striking Bernal and injuring him slightly, police said. Smith died of multiple gunshot wounds.
“It was only after one officer had been knocked to the ground and was struggling with the former all-star wrestler over possession of his weapon, that the use of force had to be escalated,” David said. “Again, the officer attempted to use the baton to no avail, only then was deadly force applied.”
One of the passing motorists who observed the incident was Navy Petty Officer Stephen Stoy, who said he was in his car when he saw two white officers struggling with a large black man alongside the roadway.
He said he saw the man grab one of the officers from behind and throw him to the ground, “He was so big, you couldn’t even see the police officer. I could tell the police officer was struggling to get away out from under him,” Stoy said.
As Stoy got out of his car, he heard a gunshot, and then a second, as one of the officers shot the man. A third shot was fired, he said, and the man stopped moving.
“The suspect was fighting straight out. He never tried to lighten up or say, `I can’t hear you.’ From what I saw, he was freaking out,” Stoy said.
The incident is now under investigation by the Illinois State Police, Cook County sheriff’s police and the Cook County state’s attorney’s office in the special Public Integrity Unit.
Capt. Kenneth Bouche of the Illinois State Police said he expects a report within 10 days.
“I don’t think we’ve reached a conclusion, but I don’t see this being a complex issue,” he said. “This isn’t a case that involved premeditation or anything like that.”