Updates on the Shooting at Ogilvie Center

By Rachelle Bowden on Dec 11, 2006 12:07PM

Last Friday we were winding down our work week when shots rang out at the offices across the street. Outside was pandemonium, with police everywhere, streets closed, sirens, and helicopters. Inside was not much better. Our office just stopped and was looking everywhere for more information online, playing radio broadcasts and trying to figure out alternate ways to get home. All the while, we tried to keep you up to date.

After the weekend, the situation is a lot more clear now. We can now answer the 4Ws + H questions. Well, maybe we'll never totally know Why, but the rest seems more clear.

On Friday, Joe Jackson, a 59-year-old man from the West Side, went to the offices of the intellectual property law firm Wood, Phillips, Katz, Clark & Mortimer. He didn't have an appointment and security wouldn't let him in. So he came back to the offices again on Friday later in the day. This time he had a revolver, a knife, and a hammer with him and he forced a security guard at gunpoint to take him up to the 38th floor. Jackson carried one more thing with him: Attorney Michael McKenna's business card. It's thought that Jackson went to the office to kill McKenna, but while he was at it, he took the lives of 2 other people and in the end he was killed too.

Witnesses say that Jackson chained the doors shut, grabbed a hostage and started shooting at people. While he was shooting, he yelled about how he'd been tricked over his invention, a toilet for semi trucks. While holding a hostage, a SWAT officer shot him in the face and the chest. Jackson died of these gunshot wounds. Also killed were Allen Hoover and Paul Goodson. There was a 4th victim, Ruth Zak Leib, who was shot in the foot, but is doing ok, considering.

It's said that Jackson chose the Wood Phillips law firm because he thought that he'd been cheated and that McKenna had stolen his toilet invention. We just heard on CBS news Sunday night that Leslie Cosby already had a patent for the portable toilet. So maybe that's why he couldn't get a patent? Or maybe he thought that she stole his idea? CBS said that Cosby's patent attorney was at the same law office.

Jackson's family says he was a father and a church-goer. His son said that his dad was so frustrated that he "just snapped."

Images via Daily Herald and Jarred Trost.