The man suspected of shooting a veteran Chicago police officer, then holding the detective hostage, told his mother about the shootout in a phone call that came during the two-hour South Loop standoff, the mother said Friday.
“I said, `The FBI was here,'” Estella Salley recalled of Tuesday’s telephone conversation with her son, Daniel Salley, 41. “He said, `I know, Momma, I’m talking to them now. I had a shootout with them.'”
Daniel Salley is accused of shooting and critically wounding Chicago Police Detective Joseph M. Airhart Jr. The detective, assigned to a federal task force, took the lead as agents tried to arrest Salley at his girlfriend’s apartment, 1307 S. Wabash Ave., on charges that Salley robbed a supermarket bank of $239,000 at gunpoint Aug. 24.
Airhart, 45, remained in critical condition Friday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and continued to rely on a ventilator to breathe, a hospital spokeswoman said. Doctors at Cook County Hospital upgraded Salley’s condition to good. He was shot four times by two of Airhart’s colleagues.
Agents went to the home Estella Salley shares with her son early Tuesday and found a letter there from the girlfriend with a return address that led Airhart’s team to the Wabash Avenue building, the FBI has said.
Estella Salley said she did not tip her son off after the visit, although the FBI acknowledged Friday that it ignored a normal practice by failing to leave an agent stationed at the mother’s home to prevent such a call. Estella Salley said her son telephoned during the standoff, though she didn’t know what he was talking about until she saw news of the siege on television.
Before hanging up, Salley told his mother he had lots of money, adding that it probably would be confiscated, she said. He also said, “`Everything will be all right. Don’t worry … I love you,'” his mother said.
Also Friday, authorities confirmed they traced the two handguns Salley allegedly used–a .44-caliber revolver and .45-caliber semiautomatic–to a Michigan woman who improperly passed them to the suspect. The woman, who was not publicly identified, is a friend of Salley’s, authorities said, adding that she bought the guns in April at a pawnshop in Benton Harbor, Mich.
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“It’s a classic `strawman’ purchase,” said David Bayless, a Chicago police spokesman.
It is illegal for someone to buy a gun, then give or sell it to someone who is banned by law from owning one. Salley is banned because of a domestic violence conviction last year, authorities have said.
FBI officials in Chicago said they are weighing possible charges against the woman. It is still unclear which weapon was used to fire the shot into Airhart’s brain, said Ross Rice, an FBI spokesman.