Witnesses Say Police Accounts of South, West Side Shootings Aren't Accurate

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jul 18, 2011 3:32PM

Here's a familiar story. Police killed two men in separate incidents on the West and South Sides within a nine-hour span Saturday. In each case the officers involved said they asked the gunman to drop his weapon before firing. In each case witnesses to the shooting said that wasn't what actually happened.

The first incident, at West Madison and South Parkside on the West side, police were flagged down by witnesses who said they hear gunshots. They found a vehicle that matched the description given to them by witnesses and found Lynell Hawkins fleeing the scene. According to Fraternal Order of Police spokesman Pat Camden, one of the officers chased Hawkins up the rear stairs of an apartment building, ordered him to drop his weapon. Hawkins then pointed his weapon at the officer, who shot him.

The account of the shooting given to police by two witnesses from another building told a different story. The two witnesses to the shooting say Hawkins tossed his gun on the roof of a nearby building, which it slid off and fell to the ground, before the officer arrived. One witness said she waited to give her statement because, “I wanted to see how the police played it."

In the South side shooting, on the 8000 block of South Ashland, police responded to a call of a man holding a woman hostage outside a social club. The FOP's Camden said police arrived to find 19-year-old Niko Husband holding a woman as a shield. When police tried to remove the woman from Husband, he supposedly pulled a gun from his waistband and was killed by police. HUsband's family has hired an attorney to do their own investigation into the shooting.