Exactly two years ago , a gang member pointed a 9mm semiautomatic Bryco 59 at Andrew Young as he sat in his car in rush-hour traffic at a stoplight at Clark and Howard.
Told to “go do it,” the shooter, Mario Ramos, fired a bullet from the weapon–allegedly purchased from a Chicagoland gun dealer–piercing Young’s heart and leaving behind a family devastated by pain.
“I’m still angry and furious,” said Stephen Young, Andrew’s father. “Anniversaries are a hard time for us.”
But Young and two other families bloodied by handguns falling into criminal hands have prepared a counterattack of their own, suing the manufacturers and sellers of the weapons that wrought such havoc in their lives.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Cook County Circuit Court, Young along with Obrellia Smith and Seonia Owens–two other parents who lost children to handgun violence–attempt to hold the gunmakers “accountable for their role in causing the deaths of their children.”
That is a notion that may also be gaining political support.
On Tuesday, a spokesman for Mayor Richard Daley said the city is exploring the possibility of filing suit against gun manufacturers as a way to combat violence on urban streets.
Earlier at a press conference on another subject, Daley commented on the gun industry in response to reporters’ questions.
“The key is to get a lawsuit whereby the manufacturer is held liable (for injuries), just like the smoking industry is held liable,” he said.
Added Daley: “Why don’t you go after who owns the companies? Go after the manufacturers.”
In doing just that, lawyers for the families have employed a new legal strategy.
Past lawsuits have usually sought–always unsuccessfully in Illinois courts–to hold gun manufacturers liable under the umbrella of the product-liability laws, claiming that manufacturers made their products unnecessarily lethal.
But this suit attacks the manufacturers on claims of negligence and public nuisance.
The families accuse the defendants of “supplying a vast, illicit underground market in handguns in order to meet the demand for weapons of gang members and juveniles.”
Attorneys for the families contend the design, marketing and distribution of the weapons “combined to create a situation where it was highly likely that the guns would flow into the underground market.”
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Locke Bowman, legal director of the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Chicago and one of the attorneys for the families, said the suit also alleges that the defendants created a public nuisance.
“The sum total is to create a climate of violence in which you really have an armed society of young people,” Bowman said.
Named as defendants in the suit are Bryco Arms, the California company that made the gun used in the murder of Andrew Young; Navegar Inc., the Florida company that manufactures the TEC DC9, which is advertised as having a fingerprint-resistant finish and “a high volume of fire power;” Smith & Wesson Corp.; and Breit & Johnson Sporting Goods, a west suburban gun dealer.
While defendants in the suit either declined to speak or could not be reached for comment, legal experts say the suit takes an interesting approach.
“It’s a new theory for an old purpose,” said Daniel Polsby, a professor of law at Northwestern, “which is basically to find a (legal) remedy against firearm manufacturers for the damage that firearms cause.”
With similar cases pending in New York and another expected in Pennsylvania, Marshall Shapo, also a Northwestern law professor, said the case could hinge on whether “a court is willing to extend liability to a chain of consequences that includes a criminal act.”
While the courts take up the legal issues, the families who lost children to gangs and guns try to move on with their lives.
It is not, they say, an easy task.
Salada Smith was 24 years old and six months’ pregnant when she was gunned down near the intersection of Cicero Avenue and Adams Street, on June 22, 1997, according to Obrellia Smith, the woman’s mother and a plaintiff in the suit.
Salada was returning home after visiting a relative, when a hail of bullets sprayed the sidewalk during a gang-related drive-by shooting.
Salada and her unborn child were not the only casualties. A young man was killed and two others were wounded. Two 17-year-olds and a 15-year-old were among those charged in connection with the shootings.
Salada left behind a 6-year-old daughter, Angela.
“This suit won’t bring my daughter back, but whatever role I can play to get these guns off the streets, I will do,” said Obrellia Smith.
It was a sentiment shared by Seonia Owens whose 15-year-old son Robert and a friend were gunned down on the South Side last year, allegedly by a 12-year-old boy trying to make an impression on fellow gang members.