A man in the Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood had been shot and killed by the city’s police after the man pointed a gun towards them.
Early on Saturday, the Chicago Police Department Office of News Affairs has stated that the officers heard shots being fired at around 10:10 p.m. on Friday and witnessed a van which drove away from the scene. A male passenger had jumped out of the van and started running.
According to Deputy Chief Dana Alexander, the man had pointed a gun at the officers and had been told to drop it. She said that one of the officers’s pulled the trigger and fired two shots.
It was stated in the news release that a weapon had been recovered at the scene although no officers had been injured.
The man was later identified as Jeffery Kemp, 18, of the 7400 block of South Jeffery Boulevard, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. At first police said they believed the man to be in his early 20s.
Subsequent the shooting, police taped off more than a block of 74th Street. Houses lined the silent block where Kemp’s body lay in the middle of the street following the shooting with the top portion of his body covered with a white sheet.
Some of the neighbors were watching on the east side of the scene from their front yards as more than a dozen officers worked behind the yellow tape. At one point, a group of people looking to find out if they knew who had been killed ducked under the tape and thereby had to be blocked by police.
Currently the shooting is being investigated. The Independent Police Review Authority couldn’t be gotten in touch with on Saturday morning.
Steven Myers
