Robert Russ had the world in his hands when he was driving home to Calumet City after hanging out with friends on June 5, 1999.
In the passenger seat next to him sat his girlfriend, who was six months pregnant with the couple’s first child.
The 22-year-old was coming off his senior season on the Northwestern football team and was looking forward to graduating from NU in just 13 days.
It never happened. Russ was shot and killed in a confrontation with Chicago Police after being pursued on the Dan Ryan Expressway. Now, four years later, Russ’ mother, Vera Love, is suing the city and officer Van B. Watts IV, who her attorneys claim broke department rules and was “out of control” when he unnecessarily shot Russ.
Attorneys for the city maintain that the gun accidentally fired when Russ tried to wrestle the gun away from the officer.
Russ was one of two unarmed civilians shot and killed by Chicago Police that weekend.
Since the trial began Sept. 16, the jury has heard expert testimony and eyewitness accounts in the suit filed on behalf of Russ’ son, now four years old. On Tuesday an expert on police confrontations testified that Watts violated several codes of conduct in pursuing and approaching Russ.
Dr. James Fife, Deputy Commission of Training for the New York Police Department, said Watts should not have joined the chase in the first place because police already had cars in pursuit. He then broke procedure by allegedly boxing in and ramming Russ’ vehicle, Fife said.
“He approached the car in a rage, screaming obscenities and kicking the side of the car,” Shapiro said. “Other than that, he did a pretty good job.”
Watts testified last week he struggled with Russ after he tried to grab the officer’s gun out of his hand. But two witnesses to the confrontation said Monday that they did not see Russ struggle.
Jesse Hansford said he was stopped in traffic two or three lanes from the confrontation and did not see Russ make contact with Watts. And Cook County sheriff’s investigator Robert Helson, who joined the chase after seeing Russ fail to pull over, said he saw Russ reach over his left shoulder with his right hand but did not see him grab anything.
Defense attorneys questioned both witnesses’ testimony, citing that Hansford told detectives that Watts was white (he is black), and that Helson filed a report afterwards in which he said “a struggle ensued.”
Watts took the stand for three days last week, when several inconsistencies in his testimony were exposed. Watts wavered on when he first spotted Russ’ vehicle and whether he heard police reports that two other cruisers were in pursuit.
A police dispatcher’s audio tape also was revealed that included Watts sending a message to another officer on the scene asking him to “come meet with me before he talks to anybody.”
The trial will continue today with testimonies from a ballistics expert and the first two officers to respond to the scene of the shooting.
