More than three years after her death, the family of an 84-year-old Chicago grandmother killed in a car accident caused by police traveling at high speed is frustrated and tired of waiting for accountability.
“Family, church, and school, that was her life,” said Pastor Dwight Gunn of his late mother, Verona Gunn, who died in 2019 from injuries sustained when a Chicago police vehicle collided with the car in which she was a passenger.
Dwight Gunn, 52, acknowledged that nothing can replace his mother, a retired schoolteacher who was also involved in her church. On May 25, 2019, she was killed by Chicago police during a violent collision involving police vehicles.
“This should not have happened,” Gunn said of the fatal car accident.
Verona Gunn was in a blue Toyota at a Chicago intersection on the evening of May 25, 2019, when a Chicago police van responding to a call for officer assistance sped past a red light with sirens blaring and flashing lights on and T-boned a police cruiser crossing the intersection with its own lights and sirens on.
The collision then caused the police cruiser to crash into the Toyota, which Verona Gunn and two other relatives occupied.
“My mom and my sister and others who had to be treated that night, It’s just very infuriating,” Dwight Gunn raged. Verona Gunn died as a result of the injuries she sustained in the crash, the other people inside the car and ten police officers also sustained injuries. In June 2019, the Gunn family filed a wrongful death lawsuit.
The Gunn family claims that the city of Chicago and the Chicago police have not responded to the family’s lawsuit or taken any action in response to the fatal crash, which causes anger and frustration in their family.
“It’s indicative of the type of callousness that exists and bureaucracy of the city’s government,” Dwight Gunn said.
To add to the frustration, dispatch recordings and surveillance video captured the fatal collision, but it took more than two years for Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability Office (COPA) to complete its own investigation and send it to the Superintendent of Police for further review.
“Three years later, we don’t have the investigative report from the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, we don’t have any discipline or termination of the officers that willfully violated Ms. Gunn’s rights,” said Andrew Stroth, the civil rights attorney representing the Gunn family.
According to Stroth, the evidence in the case is unmistakable. “There is video from the gas station, there is video from the liquor store, and it’s very damaging because it clearly shows the officers traveling at excessive speeds,” the attorney explained.
“If you listen to the OEMC, the Emergency Management Dispatch tapes, you hear the slowdown order multiple times from dispatch, the officer disregarded those orders to slow down,” Stroth continued.
According to the Associated Press, the dispatcher informed the officers prior to the accident that the armed suspect at the scene they were racing to had already been disarmed.
“COPA closed the investigation into this incident on July 2, 2021, and it is our understanding that the superintendent weighed in on COPA’s recommendations. Currently, this case is with the Department of Law.” COPA said in a statement.
“COPA will post its Summary Report of Investigation, which will include COPA’s analysis of the evidence and investigative findings and recommendations, on its website upon the conclusion of the Superintendent’s review or, if applicable, following service of disciplinary charges by the Department of Law on any involved officer,” the agency added.
The Chicago Department of Law said that the lawsuit filed against the city is still pending, so it cannot comment on the case.
“It’s just a tragedy the City of Chicago should learn from,” Stroth said of the ordeal. “It’s not like it was a young man with a gun, it was an innocent 84-year-old woman coming home from a graduation party, and the cops being overzealous and you watch the crash, it’s horrifying,”
While the Gunn family anticipates monetary damages in the future, they have not specified how much money they are seeking. They do, however, want to see immediate policy changes, specifically a motor vehicle safety program implemented so that no one else is killed by Chicago police responding to emergencies due to reckless driving or high-speed vehicle pursuits.
“In our case, it’s really a matter of people following the general orders, if that would have happened, this would not be a case right now,” Dwight Gunn said of the family’s lawsuit against the city and police.
The Chicago police are yet to respond to questions on when their department will complete its review of COPA’s investigation and whether any disciplinary action will be taken against the officers involved in the fatal crash. While the Gunn family awaits the outcome of the investigation, they continue to treasure their memories of Verona.
“My mom was genuinely a very steadfast Christian woman,” Gunn said. “[People] knew they had a place with my mom to be loved on, to be cared for, and that was just her heart and nature,” he continued.
At this time, there is no word on when Chicago police will make the findings of their investigation public.