Chicago Police Respond To Domestic Disturbance, Shoot And Kill Teen, Neighbor

By Merrit Kennedy

Published December 26, 2015 at 2:59 PM EST

Chicago police fatally shot a 19-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman when responding to a domestic disturbance call early Saturday.

Family members of 19-year-old victim Quintonio LeGrier told The Chicago Tribune that he was acting "agitated" and holding a baseball bat. "His father became worried and called the police," The Chicago Tribune reports.

Details are slim about what happened between that call and LeGrier's death. LeGrier's neighbor Betty R. Jones was also killed, reports indicate. Both of the victims are black.

Here's how the Chicago Police Department described the incident, which started when they responded to a "domestic disturbance," according to The Associated Press:

"The Chicago Police Department said in a statement that the shootings happened at around 4:25 a.m. Saturday after responding officers 'were confronted by a combative subject' on the city's West Side.

Police said the shooting is under investigation and the case has been referred to the city's main police oversight agency."

LeGrier's family members told the Tribune that the college student was shot seven times.

They say LeGrier hadn't been acting like himself since September, and his behavior this morning prompted the call to the police. "We're thinking the police are going to service us, take him to the hospital. They took his life," LeGrier's mother Janet Cooksey told the Tribune.

It's unclear how Betty R. Jones, the neighbor, was also killed. In this NBC Chicago segment, a tearful young woman identified as Jones' daughter says her mother was shot dead when she opened her door.

A recent investigative project by The Washington Post found that in the first half of the year, "police have shot and killed 124 people ... in the throes of a mental or emotional crisis." Like this case, many of those incidents happened when police responded to the calls of relatives or neighbors "worried that a mentally fragile person was behaving erratically."

Last month, the Chicago police released dashcam video showed a white police officer firing 16 times at 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, killing the teenager. The release of the video sparked near-daily protests, as we previously reported. Here's more:

"For more than a year, the department refused requests for the dashcam video to be released. Now, the officer behind the shooting has been charged with murder. Protesters have alleged that police attempted to cover up the shooting, and the Justice Department has launched a federal investigation into the Chicago police force's practices."