After trying for 10 minutes to cajole the owner of a dilapidated Northwest Side apartment building to open his door and face arrest, Chicago Police Officer Donald Marquez finally swung a sledgehammer and knocked the door down.
Henry A. Wolk, a 77-year-old wanted in Housing Court, was waiting on the other side, a handgun in each hand. He opened fire, killing the 47-year-old officer, a veteran of the force for 20 years and a father of four.
Afterward, Wolk was shot to death in a furious blaze of gunfire with police that lasted 10 minutes and, to area residents, sounded “like a war.”
Marquez’s death early Tuesday sent shock waves through a police department that has now seen six of its officers killed in the line of duty since 1998. Visibly shaken, Chicago Police Supt. Terry Hillard told reporters Tuesday that Marquez was an “honest, hardworking cop, whose efforts made this city a safe place.
“Yes, we are hanging our heads once again,” Hillard said, his voice quavering. “But we’re walking tall.”
The incident began in an unlikely way: serving a warrant for Housing Court violations. The warrant authorized Marquez and his partner to take Wolk into custody so he could appear in court Tuesday for 29 building code violations associated with his two-story, brown-brick building at 2451 N. Avers Ave.
Prior citations
Those citations were issued last May, and since then, Wolk had failed to show up in Housing Court six times to address the violations, city officials said.
In January, a Housing Court judge signed an order authorizing police to take Wolk into custody, said Phil Cline, the department’s chief of detectives. Before Monday, Marquez and his partner made several attempts to serve the warrant on Wolk. Each time, Wolk refused to open the door.
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The two officers, wearing civilian clothes, appeared again at Wolk’s doorstep at about 10 p.m. Monday. An upstairs neighbor agreed to help the officers persuade Wolk to open his door. The officers and the neighbor spoke to Wolk through the door for 10 minutes, but the conversation was “one-way,” Cline said. Wolk would not respond.
Marquez then used a sledgehammer to try to break down the door. Brandishing a .22 caliber revolver in one hand and a .22 semiautomatic handgun in the other, Wolk fired through the doorway the moment the door crashed down, Cline said.
The bullets struck Marquez in the head, chest and abdomen. He was pronounced dead at 12:25 a.m. Tuesday.
Marquez was not wearing a bulletproof vest. The department requires officers on patrol or working the street to wear their vests at all times, said First Deputy Supt. John Thomas.
Marquez’s partner and Wolk’s neighbor ran up the stairs for cover after the initial gunshots. Several backup officers arrived shortly afterward and were able to carry Marquez to a waiting ambulance, even as Wolk fired at them.
“The officers … were heroic last night in retrieving Officer Marquez,” Cline said.
Officers and Wolk exchanged gunfire for 10 minutes before Wolk, who was holed up in his kitchen, was shot to death by police. Police found a third gun, a .32 caliber revolver, in Wolk’s apartment, Cline said.
Marquez had spent the last few months assigned to the city’s corporation counsel office, police said, a job that often required serving warrants for the city’s Law Department.
Law Department spokeswoman Jennifer Hoyle said it is not unusual for any of the 25 investigators detailed from the Police Department to serve warrants and other documents late into the night, especially when those officers have to take someone into custody for a next-day court appearance.
“They basically get a list of things that have to be served and they run through the list,” Hoyle said. “The time wasn’t unusual. The case was up today [Tuesday] so it would have been typical to go out the day before to pick up the person.”
Neighbors and others who knew Wolk described him as quick-tempered and unstable. Marvin Cruz, who had been talking to Wolk about buying the house and allowing him to live there rent free, said Wolk worried that burglars were impersonating police officers and plotting to rob him.
“One of his fears was home invasion,” Cruz said.
However, police discounted any notion that Wolk mistakenly believed intruders were trying to break into his house.
“He knew these officers from past summonses that were issued,” Cline said. “There was no doubt that he knew they were Chicago police officers, but he had made a comment to the neighbor [with Marquez and his partner] that he was not going to go to court, no matter what.”
Suspicious of everyone
Wolk was suspicious of virtually everyone, neighbors said. When Cruz and Wolk first began talking about the sale of Wolk’s home two months ago, Wolk would only speak to Cruz through a mail slot.
Later, Wolk complained to Cruz that the government was trying to take his building away from him.
“`Why can’t they leave me alone?'” Cruz recalled Wolk saying. “`I’m old. I’m not hurting anybody. Just leave me alone.'” When Cruz offered to drive Wolk to court, Wolk refused.
Wolk told Cruz he did not want to leave his house because he had no family, he had lived there since he was 2 years old, and had seen his mother and father die there. “He says, `I plan to die here too,'” Cruz said.
Inside Wolk’s apartment, piles of newspapers, magazines, and grocery bags. Stacks of boxes filled most of the rooms, Cruz said. “It smelled really bad–like old pizza,” he said.
Mayor Richard Daley called Marquez a “well-recognized police officer, formerly a [tactical unit] officer. He has a great career in the Chicago Police Department … I extend my condolences to the officer’s family.”
New grandfather
Marquez and his wife, Maria, had four children. The oldest, also named Maria, had the couple’s first grandson last week, said Marquez’s cousin, Erika Marquez Sauseda.
Officers who worked with Marquez called him aggressive, personable and dedicated. He grew up in the city’s Back of the Yards neighborhood, the third of six children.
“He was really kind with everybody,” said Sgt. Alfonso Bautista, who worked with Marquez for more than a year at the department’s Marquette District.
Later, they worked together for a year on the district’s tactical unit, dubbed the “Wild Bunch” by street criminals. The term was a sign of respect, said Sgt. Thomas Eichler, Marquez’s tactical unit supervisor.
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“He loved working on the `tac’ team, the excitement doing the search warrants, the raids, the drugs, the gangs,” Eichler said. “He still talked about his old time with the tactical team. That was his proudest thing, being a member of the old Wild Bunch.”
Marquez transferred to the Harrison Area detective division to work the midnight-shift desk, but he later sought to return to street work and was sent to the corporation counsel detail. “He said that he was much happier doing that. It made him feel like the police,” Bautista said.
After graduating from Kelly High School, Marquez worked as a sheet-metal worker, said his brother, Dan. But after seeing a couple of his close friends die because of gang violence, Donald Marquez began thinking about becoming a cop.
“He loved his job. He had the instincts to be out on the street,” Dan Marquez said. “He died doing what he wanted to be doing.”