They all heard the boom–the drivers stuck in traffic, the cluster of people smoking in front of the rehab center, the detailer outside the car dealership waxing the hood of a car, the pedestrian who’d just scored a bag of heroin and helped himself to a few snorts. Some of them also saw what caused it: a gray Ford Crown Victoria slamming into a boy and girl as they crossed Grand Avenue.
Hector Soto, a mechanic heading home from Atiles Auto Service, noticed the unmarked police car behind him as he drove north on Pulaski and observed that it stayed on his tail as he turned northwest onto Grand. A few blocks later Soto hit bumper-to-bumper traffic–congestion typical of that stretch of Grand on a Wednesday afternoon. The police car was still behind him at that point, he’d recall under oath, but then it “all of a sudden just took off,” maneuvering around his car with the siren wailing and driving off with “all four wheels in the east lane.” The car cruised past the traffic and through an intersection, he said, continuing west in the eastbound lane.
The driver of the van with the mattresses thought he’d been sideswiped: “My van shook.”
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Police Superintendent Phil Cline stopped by the hospital the day Gregory died. “He came and gave me his condolences and said they would be investigating,” Vanilla Simmons says.
Mayor Daley appeared on TV later that day narrating how the gunman had aimed his weapon at people on the street. Superintendent Cline expressed sympathy for everyone involved, calling the collision a “tragic accident” that was “every parent’s and every driver’s nightmare.” A witness on TV, however, sounded angry: she complained that the police had been “speeding real fast, like they always do.”
Loevy & Loevy specializes in claims alleging police misconduct. “The department’s first response is always to say the officers did nothing wrong. No matter what, the officers did nothing wrong,” says Loevy attorney Amanda Antholt. But in this case, she says, “they have no justification for what they were doing. They were impatient with traffic and they wanted to get back to the district to get their arrestee processed.”
Maher said she met with a commander from the major accident investigation unit and asked him about the department’s rules regarding pursuits.
