In the moments after three women were struck by a van and a mob turned on the driver and his passenger, there was no shortage of information coming into police–at least 20 people called from cell phones and nearby buildings.
But on Wednesday, the day after the two men were beaten to death on a hot summer evening, police made a public plea for more help from witnesses.
Police sources acknowledged they were having difficulty unraveling the chaotic and brutal attack near 40th Street and South Lake Park Avenue. Witnesses who were talking didn’t know much and those who might know something were not cooperative, according to a police source working on the investigation.
Although police had nine or more people in custody a day after the attack, Chief of Detectives Phil Cline would characterize only one as a suspect.
Police Supt. Terry Hillard promised a resolution to the matter, saying he was certain the “cowardly thugs” would be charged.
“This is not street justice,” Hillard said. “This is not vigilante justice. This is not justice of any kind.”
Mayor Richard Daley condemned the attack.
“It’s uncalled for,” he said. “It should never take place in any society.”
Past incidents of mob beatings suggest that police sometimes have difficulty sorting out witnesses from perpetrators. No charges were brought in one recent Chicago case in which a mob repeatedly beat and shot a man accused of killing his landlady.
Following Tuesday’s fatal beatings, police had nine people in custody, an investigator said. One was a woman, who police did not believe was involved in the beatings, the investigator said.
Complicating the investigation, many of the nine had blood on them Tuesday night, according to police. But it was not clear whether the blood came from the beaten men or the women who were hit by the van.
A police source said the suspect is a 20-year-old man who is a friend of one of the injured women.
Neighbors described some of the other men taken in for questioning: some are relatives of the injured women; one is a former high-school honor student who plans to attend college on a scholarship in the fall; another is a man whose car had broken down in the neighborhood; yet another attended elementary school with one of the injured women (published material has been deleted from this sentence).
After conducting autopsies Wednesday, the Cook County medical examiner’s office ruled the deaths homicides after determining that Jack Moore, 62, and Anthony Stuckey, 49, both of the 3500 block of South Rhodes Avenue in Chicago, died of multiple injuries and blunt trauma.
The office was awaiting results of toxicology tests, which could determine whether Moore, the driver of the van, had been drinking.
The three women hurt in the traffic accident were being treated on Wednesday night. According to hospital spokespeople, Shani Lawrence (the name as published has been corrected here and in subsequent references in this text), 26, was in critical condition and her cousin Jenny Lawrence, 18, was in fair condition, both in Mt. Sinai Hospital, and Jenny Lawrence’s best friend, Andrea Long, 17, was in fair condition at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
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The events Tuesday night began simply enough–a group of people gathering at the neighborhood hangout and two old friends packing a van to move.
Relatives said Moore and Stuckey had known each other for years. Neither had jobs, although Moore once worked for the U.S. Postal Service, according to neighbors and relatives. Neither man married. Stuckey has a son who lives in Wisconsin.
Both were only children who lived with their mothers, on and off, in the Lawless Gardens Apartments, about a mile northwest of where they died. Neighbors and relatives still called them “boys,” despite the men’s ages. Moore did not even have an apartment key until his mother died in June–a neighbor and the property manager, Adrienne Baquet, sometimes saw him sitting in front of the apartment, waiting for her to get home.
Both faced pending felony charges for possessing drugs. Moore also faced a pending traffic charge for running a red light.
Stuckey and Moore knew each other from the building, said Stuckey’s mother, Virginia. The Stuckeys lived on the 12th floor, the Moores on the 14th. Moore’s mother died June 16.
Baquet told Moore he needed to move out by the end of July because he didn’t qualify by himself for the federally subsidized two-bedroom apartment.
Moore and Stuckey rented a van Tuesday from Elite Truck Rental, said William Phillips, the company’s president.
As Moore and Stuckey loaded the van Tuesday evening, people started gathering a mile away, as they usually do on summer nights. They left the sweltering heat of the Lake Parc Place, a 15-story Chicago Housing Authority building at 40th Street and South Lake Park Avenue and walked across the street to William Williams’ home.
Williams, 89, has lived in the three-story home for 31 years. He said neighborhood kids like to hang out on his front steps. Neighbors said they sometimes play dice on the sidewalk or drink beer or flirt with each other.
“They give me respect and I return it,” said Williams, who was not home Tuesday night. “I have no problem with them.”
Close friends
Jenny Lawrence and Andrea Long often went to the stoop from Lake Parc Place. The two friends do everything together, including taking care of children in the apartment complex, friends and relatives said.
Although Lawrence graduated from King High School in 2001, she waited at home for a year until Long graduated so they could start college at Southern Illinois University at the same time, said Lawrence’s brother Mario.
“They were just out, trying to catch a nice breeze,” he said.
Shani Lawrence was staying with her cousins at Lake Parc Place but planned to get her own apartment soon.
At 6:41 p.m. Tuesday, Moore and Stuckey drove a load of furniture east on 40th Street. They blew through a stop sign and somehow lost control of the van while turning left onto Lake Park, police said. The van crashed over the curb, jumped a stoop and ran onto the home’s front steps where the people were gathered.
Some witnesses told police that it appeared that Moore backed up and plowed forward again. But a police source said it appears Moore hit reverse, struck a tree, then rolled forward again.
Shani Lawrence ended up beneath the van, said Prairie District Cmdr. Adrienne Stanley. Jenny Lawrence ended up on the steps, and Long was hit but was able to run across the street and into the apartment complex, Stanley said.
Barbara Hill, Jenny Lawrence’s mother, said she leaped from the van’s path, carrying her 1-year-old son to safety. She said she checked on her daughter, then ran to call police. She said she did not see what occurred next.
`Please don’t hit me’
A witness from Lake Parc Place who did not want to be identified said she saw three men go to each side of the van. They pulled Stuckey out of the passenger side’s window and Moore out of the driver’s side window.
A witness on the stoop, who also did not want to be named, said Moore begged: “Please don’t hit me.”
But the mob punched and kicked the two men. Police and witnesses say that members of the mob then grabbed broken pieces of the stone stairs and pounded Stuckey and Moore in the head and chest.
The 911 center was flooded with about 20 calls within two minutes from neighbors in nearby high-rises and homes, as well as people on the street using cell phones. The first calls reported the van accident, then came calls about the chaos that followed.
Police arrive
Cline said the first police car arrived within four minutes of the first call, early enough to catch the tail end of the beating. Some people were taken into custody at the scene, police said.
Across the street, video surveillance cameras posted on the CHA high-rise captured some of the beating, police sources said. But the quality of the images is poor, and police were trying to enhance the images.
Although her daughter had been hurt, Barbara Hill said the men didn’t deserve the beating.
“I’m sorry it happened to those two guys,” she said. “I ain’t wishing nothing bad to happen to them.”
– – –
`Diffusion of responsibility’ in mob action
Mob violence of the kind seen Tuesday night is a relatively rare occurrence, according to mental health professionals.
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“It is not at all characteristic of human beings to behave this way,” said Emil Coccaro, a psychiatrist at the University of Chicago Hospitals.
But when groups congregate the atmosphere can remove some constraints, causing people to act in ways they would never do if they were alone, said Robert Zitter, a psychologist at Christ Hospital and Medical Center in Oak Lawn.
“There’s a diffusion of responsibility,” Zitter said. “In a crowd, people who have never committed a violent act in their life get caught up in the emotion. It’s about the anonymity … and the reinforcement of the group that makes this a totally different dynamic.”
Sticky, sweltering weather can contribute to the situation by causing tempers to flare.
“The hotter it is, the more irritable people get … and the more aggression can escalate,” said Coccaro.
Coccaro specializes in intermittent explosive disorder–a “hothead” condition that has a genetic component and affects 2 to 5 percent of the population.
— Bonnie Miller Rubin