CHICAGO — It took Chicago Police hours after the fatal shootings of Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones to tell medical examiner investigators that they were shot by police, according to autopsy records.
Police hesitated in telling the Cook County Medical Examiner's Officer about the shooting for so long that an investigator for the county morgue didn't even make it out to the scene, which is the morgue's standard practice in police-involved shootings, a county spokeswoman said.
In fact, police originally told the morgue's investigator that the shooting did not involve police, according to records received by the county. Morgue employees rarely visit routine homicide scenes.
"At the initial time of this report, Investigator [Justin] Pratt was told this was not a police involved shooting," reads the medical examiner's investigation report. "Attempts to gather more information from CPD were to no avail."
Chicago Police dispute that account. A police source said that the department is looking into the issue, since the medical examiner's office said they first received word about the shooting from Stroger Hospital. The source said detectives notified the medical examiner's office that both victims died in a police-involved shooting at 7:44 a.m., about three hours after the shooting occurred.
LeGrier, 19, and Jones, 55, were both fatally shot by police after a Dec. 26 domestic incident in Austin between LeGrier and his father.
Police were called to the LeGrier home in the 4700 block of West Erie Street at 4:25 a.m. after LeGrier's father had told dispatchers his son was acting erratically and had a baseball bat.
An officer shot at LeGrier after he allegedly approached police with the bat, striking the teen six times. He was shot in the chest, back, right buttock and left arm and was grazed in his left chest and right shoulder, according to autopsy documents released Thursday.
Jones was standing behind LeGrier when shots rang out, and she was fatally struck once in the chest. The bullet pierced her heart and lodged in her back, according to the autopsy.
Chicago Police made a statement on the shooting at 8:30 p.m. that night, confirming the shooting deaths and saying Jones' death was a "tragic" accident.
Police have not made any more statements on the case.
Narrative that emerged from the shooting, reported by DNAinfo Chicago and other outlets, was that the officer shot from outside the Austin apartment building towards the building's door, where LeGrier was standing with Jones behind him.
But according to the morgue's investigation, the shooting took place inside the building's stairwell.
The report says that Jones was asked to answer the door for police and show them to the LeGrier household. Jones did just that, despite a friend asking her not to get involved.
Jones allegedly answered the door and pointed up the stairwell, when officers saw LeGrier coming down the stairs with a bat. Jones made her way back to her apartment, but not before she was shot, according to the report, which attributed the information to a police officer at the scene.
That narrative, however, does not appear to gel with what witnesses and family of the two slain neighbors said at the scene shortly after the shooting. Sources pointed to bullet holes in the building's facade that they say showed officers shot from outside into the building's doorway.
Family and friends of the slain neighbors point to an alleged bullet hole in the home's facade. [DNAinfo/Kelly Bauer]
After the shooting, family and friends thought that police shot through a closed front door, as evidenced by bullet holes in and around the door as well as in a bedroom stationed right inside the door, according to DNAinfo's reporting from the scene.
The medical examiner's investigator did not document the scene or the bullet holes in the building because they did not get notified of the shooting in time to respond, said Becky Schlikerman, spokeswoman for the medical examiner's office.
In this case, the ability to not respond to the scene did not interfere directly with the autopsy findings, Schlikerman said. Autopsies concluded that LeGrier and Jones were killed by gunshot wounds and that the manner of death was homicide.
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