But instead of celebrating a baptism, the daughter spent much of Sunday in mourning. She had lost the woman she said was “my heart” and “my everything.”
The day before, on Dec. 26, Jones, a mother of five children, was shot to death after answering the door for Chicago police, who had been called to the apartment by Jones’s landlord and upstairs neighbor. The landlord’s son, 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier, was carrying a baseball bat and threatening his father, according to police dispatch.
LeGrier — who had graduated last year from Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy with at least a 3.0 GPA, the school’s website shows — had been living with his father while home on break from Northern Illinois University, where he was an engineering student.
Antonio LeGrier told the Chicago Sun-Times that his son, who had spent most of his youth in foster care, was a “whiz kid” who had nonetheless been dealing with some emotional problems. The teenager had been admitted to a hospital this past Thanksgiving and prescribed medication to cope with some of those psychological struggles, his father said.
His mother, Janet Cooksey, told the Sun-Times that her son “could become ‘hyper’ and ‘a little loud’ at times,” but that those tendencies didn’t warrant officer’s bullets.
“When is this going to stop?” Cooksey said. “My son wasn’t a thug on the street or a violent person.”
According to the preliminary statement released by the Chicago Police Department, at approximately 4:25 a.m., officers from the 11th District responded to a “domestic disturbance” on the 4700 block of West Erie. When they arrived, the statement notes, they were “confronted by a combative subject resulting in the discharge of the officer’s weapon, fatally wounding two individuals.”
There were no witnesses to the shooting besides officers on the scene, but police haven’t disclosed any further details — not even the identities of the officers involved. In a statement released on Dec. 27, the department called Jones’s death “an accident” and offered an apology.
Larry Merritt, a spokesman for the Independent Police Review Authority, said the entity has launched an investigation into the murders.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who was on vacation in Cuba at the time of the shooting, called Jones’s family to apologize and in a statement noted that each time an officer “uses force the public deserves answers, and regardless of the circumstances, we all grieve anytime there is a loss of life in our city.”
Family members of the victims who were inside the building when the shooting happened told DNAinfo that Jones was asleep when she received a call from her landlord to open the door for the police. She had answered the door in her nightgown, they said.
Some family members believe police may have shot Jones through the door — they directed media to a small hole in the front door — before also fatally wounding LeGrier.