Horrible Holiday Happenings

By Shannon in News on Nov 25, 2006 6:16PM

Chicagoist has personally never had any big to-dos at Thanksgiving. The perennial holiday has not, for us, ended with anyone coming out of the closet, any drinks hurled into the fireplace, or the birth of sibling estrangements. We can't comprehend, then, being held at gunpoint by a psychotic criminal on a day for which one should be thankful.

By now everyone has heard about the tragic murder-suicide on South Jeffery. At around 1:30 a.m. Thursday, 21-year-old Lance Johnson became irritated when his neighbor's baby wouldn't stop crying. He fired shots through their front door, forcing the occupants to flee. All escaped unharmed except for 22-year-old Tasha Cooks, whom Johnson then took hostage once the police showed up. Johnson, an ex-con with mental problems, held Cooks for 23 hours in her apartment. At one point he let her call her family, to whom she reported that she was being beaten. Police tried to keep up a dialogue with Johnson, even fetching things when he demanded them, but to no avail. Just after 1 a.m. Friday morning, a gunshot came from within the standoff apartment. A flashbang grenade was employed to distract the gunman; all that served to do was mask the followup shot of Johnson taking his own life. When the chaos cleared, police found Johnson and Cooks both fatally wounded. According to neighbors, Johnson didn't have a previous beef with Cooks; he even played cards with her on occasion.

Now police are taking the heat from Cooks' family and friends for taking so long to act. They've countered the attacks by saying they were following protocol, and that Johnson seemed very unstable and hadn't taken his medication. Isn't that more reason to try to defuse the situation through any means possible? Surely there had to be someone on the police crew who'd tried to get inside his head. We want to know what he was thinking too. Now we'll never know.

Image via centreforsafety.org.