Plaintiff:
Laquan McDonald
Incident date:
10/20/2014
Location:
4060 S. Pulaski Rd.
Allegations:
Around 9:45 p.m., officers responded to a call of a man breaking into cars at 41st Street and Kildare Avenue. Two officers responded and reported that a man was walking through the street with a knife in his hand. They requested assistance from “someone with a Taser.” One of the officers followed McDonald on foot while the other drove his police vehicle slowly alongside. The officers again requested a Taser and continued to follow McDonald as he turned south on Pulaski Road. Several other police vehicles arrived on the scene and positioned themselves in front of and behind McDonald. Officers Van Dyke and Walsh drove up in their marked Chevy Tahoe, parked in the middle of Pulaski, immediately exited their vehicles and drew their weapons. McDonald immediately changed direction, jogging away from the officers as he crossed Pulaski Road. Officer Van Dyke began shooting, hitting McDonald, the force of the bullet spinning him around. As McDonald fell to the ground on his right side, Officer Van Dyke continued shooting, ultimately hitting McDonald with 16 bullets throughout his body. Although there were at least 10 officers on the scene, only Van Dyke felt the need to use deadly force. After shooting him, Officer Van Dyke walked up to McDonald and kicked the knife out of his hand. McDonald, who was 17 years old, was pronounced dead at Mt. Sinai Hospital at 10:42 p.m. After the shooting, officers took one witness to a police station and questioned her for six hours, repeatedly trying to get her to change her story that McDonald was not a threat to the officers when Van Dyke shot him, telling her that her story “did not match the video,” which they refused to show her. Also after the shooting, several officers entered the Burger King at 4060 S. Pulaski Road and demanded the password to the surveillance video system. Officers were in the Burger King for several hours, and in the morning, the store manager and district manager found that 86 minutes of video from each of the 13 Burger King surveillance cameras were missing.