Chicago Police Kill Middle-Aged Woman While Responding to Call About Teenage Man, Whom They Also Killed

Chicago Police Kill Middle-Aged Woman While Responding to Call About Teenage Man, Whom They Also Killed

Bettie Jones, left, and Quintonio LeGrier

Carlos Miller – PINAC – December 26, 2015

Responding to a domestic violence call about about a teenage man threatening to hurt his father with a baseball bat, Chicago police arrived and shot a middle-aged woman dead after she opened the door to let them inside.
Then they shot the teenager dead.
Neither one of them was armed with a gun.
Chicago police offered scarce details other than telling the media they arrived at the building and “were confronted by a combative individual, resulting in an officer firing shots, fatally wounding two individuals.”
But dispatchers clearly told officers the situation involved a 19-year-old male with a bat, not a middle-aged woman who apparently was only trying to let them inside the building.
The woman’s name was Bettie Jones, a mother of five, who was either 55 or 57. She lived in the downstairs flat of the two-story building owned by the teen’s father, who lived in the upstairs flat with his wife and son.
Her daughter, Latesha Jones said  police shot her from outside the door while her mother remained inside the door.
The teen’s father had told her to be on the lookout for police and to stay away from his son, who was having a mental episode.
The teen’s name was Quintonio Legrier, 19, a Northern Illinois University student studying engineering, who also suffered from mental illness and was prone to outbursts, but was not known to be violent.
“He was having a mental situation. Sometimes he will get loud, but not violent,” the teen’s mother, Janet Cookery, told ABC 7.
Early this morning, the teen began banging on their bedroom door with a bat, which is when the father called police.
Despite his mental illness, Legrier appeared to be studious and benevolent, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Legrier was admitted in 2014 to Northern Illinois University, where he majored in electrical engineering technology, according to the university’s website.
He had graduated last year from Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy with honors, for having a grade-point average of 3.0 or higher, according to the school’s website.

Legrier, who weighed 150 pounds, was shot seven times. The name of the officer has not been released.
“You call the police, you try to get help and you lose a loved one,” she told the Chicago Tribune. “What are they trained for? Just to kill? I thought that we were supposed to get service and protection. I mean, my son was an honors student. He’s here for Christmas break, and now I’ve lost him.”