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Mother Sues City Over Fatal Christmas 2014 Shooting

By Rachel Cromidas in News on Dec 28, 2015 6:14PM

A Chicago woman is suing the city and the police officers who shot and killed her son on Christmas Day 2014.

The lawsuit, which argues police used excessive force in dealing with her 25-year-old son, Terrance Gilbert, comes on the heels of the news that Chicago police officers fatally shot two neighbors, one accidentally, in the early morning after Christmas Day this year.

Gilbert was fatally shot outside the front porch of his aunt's home in South Woodlawn, according to the Tribune, after Gilbert had allegedly threatened suicide and charged at officers with a knife, stabbing one twice in the vest. Gilbert reportedly fled from police after that, then turned at charged the officers again, the police said. Gilbert's mother, Sharon Woodall, said in her lawsuit that the officer who shot him had behaved with "misconduct" and the other officers involved "failed to protect" Gilbert from harm.

The lawsuit acknowledges that the city's Independence Police Review Authority was tasked with investigating the shooting, per department protocol, but that IPRA has a history of wrongly finding police shootings to be "justified." The lawsuit cites a 2009 IPRA ruling regarding the now-disgraced officer Jason Van Dyke, who is facing murder charges for shooting Laquan McDonald 16 times in 2014, as evidence of this.