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Family Of Boy, 11, Killed In Police Chase Set To Get $1.3 Million From City

 Donovan Turnage was on the way with his family to get Christmas haircuts in December 2013 when he was killed.
Donovan Turnage was on the way with his family to get Christmas haircuts in December 2013 when he was killed.
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DNAinfo/Darryl Holliday

CHICAGO — The city should pay the family of an 11-year-old boy killed by a speeding carjacker being chased by police $1.275 million, city attorneys recommended Friday.

Donovan Turnage was on his way to get Christmas haircuts with his father and older brother on Dec. 21, 2013, when their vehicle was struck at 55th and Halsted streets by a man driving a stolen van being chased by police.

The van slammed into the left side of the family's Chevrolet Suburban after officers tried to curb it during the chase, officials said. Donovan was ejected from the back seat and was fatally injured.

Donovan, a fifth-grader at Morrill Math and Science School, was remembered by his brother Derrick Turnage as a "a joyful, playful, goofy kid."

"He was a game head," Turnage said. "He said he wanted to make his own video games, be a graphic designer. He was into anything to do with technology. Nobody knew it unless you knew him."

The family's lawsuit against the city said Donovan's death was an “entirely preventable” tragedy caused by the Police Department's decision to chase a stolen car on a crowded street in the middle of the day,

Rockie Douglas, of suburban Beach Park, was charged in 2015 with hijacking several cars and causing the crash that killed Donovan.

After Donovan was killed, Douglas kept driving — eventually hijacking at least two more cars and stealing a 52-year-old woman's purse in a Jewel-Osco parking lot before fleeing to Wisconsin, where he was arrested, prosecutors said.