Family of man fatally shot by police files suit against Elk Grove Village
The family of a 24-year-old Elk Grove Village man fatally shot by police has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the village and five officers.
The civil complaint, filed Wednesday in Cook County circuit court, alleges officers made “numerous negligent decisions” and violated their policies and training in the Dec. 1, 2023 shooting of Jack Murray.
“I am telling you here today: They all knew Jack and our family by first name. Every single one of them,” Murray’s mother, Donna Murray, said at a downtown Chicago news conference Thursday morning. “Why? Why? He never hurt anybody. Not even his own family. Never. He only always cried out for help. It always happened. What went wrong this day?”
The family’s attorney, Antonio Romanucci, said Jack Murray was in a diminished and impaired mental state when he called 911 the afternoon of Dec. 1. After officers arrived outside his house on Fern Drive, Romanucci said they failed to use de-escalation tactics or give Murray the “the time, physical space and ultimately the desperate assistance he needed.”
Though police deployed a Taser as Murray approached them with a knife, Romanucci said they could’ve used additional nonlethal weapons they had, like a beanbag rifle, batons or pepper spray.
The encounter “demanded crisis intervention, and not a full military-style police response that Jack got instead,” Romanucci said. “A call to the police for help should never, ever be a death sentence.”
Village officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday, but Mayor Craig Johnson in December said officers utilized crisis intervention, mental health and de-escalation tactics on which they were trained.
The news conference at Romanucci’s downtown law firm Thursday was attended by dozens of Murray’s family and friends wearing white T-shirts with the text “Justice for Jack 12-1-23 “.