McCarthy Called To Testify About Killing Of Unarmed Man By Officer
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Police Supt. Garry McCarthy is being ordered to answer questions in a lawsuit filed in connection with a fatal police-involved shooting.
As WBBM Newsradio's Bob Conway reports, last June, Flint Farmer, 29, was shot and killed by Officer Gildardo Garcia, who had just responded to a domestic battery call in the West Englewood neighborhood.
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Around 1:40 a.m. June 7, responding officers in the 6200 block of South Wolcott Avenue saw Farmer run off. Police said they ordere dhim to stop running, and he turned and pulled an object from his pocket that the officer thought was a handgun.
Police said the officer Farmer after he "aggressively came at the officer" and did not drop the object as officers ordered.
Sierra fired 16 shots at Farmer and hit him seven times, but it turned that he was not to be armed, according to the Chicago Tribune. He was only holding a cell phone.
In an October 2011 story, the Tribune reported that Farmer was lying prone on the ground when Sierra fired three shots into Farmer's back and killed him. But the Police Department ruled the shooting justified.
Still, Farmer's girlfriend is suing over the police shooting, and U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve has now ordered city attorneys to take depositions from Sierra, as well as Supt. McCarthy.
Farmer's death was the third shooting involving Sierra in a period of six months.
On Jan. 7 of last year, Sierra and his partner pulled over a car that matched the description of a vehicle implicated in an earlier shooting, and the officers shot at the car and hit Pinex after he put the car into reverse and dragged them, the Tribune reported.
On March 22 of last year, Sierra and his partner responded to a call of shots fired at 59th Street and Princeton Avenue, and were confronted at gunpoint by suspect Dion Richards, 19, the Tribune reported. The officers fired at Richards and wounded him in the leg, the newspaper reported.
The Tribune quotes McCarthy as saying while the first two shootings were justified, Sierra should have been taken off the street after the third incident. That statement is what Craig Sandberg, an attorney for Farmer's girlfriend, wants to question McCarthy about.
