Aldermen Monday advanced a $1.2 million settlement proposal for the mother of Pierre Loury, a 16-year-old boy, who a Chicago police officer shot during a foot chase on the West Side.
In a 13-8 vote, the City Council Finance Committee approved the deal for Tambrasha Hudson, who sued the city in federal court over the fatal 2016 shooting of Pierre Loury, her son. The full City Council will consider it and other settlements Wednesday. The wrongful death lawsuit alleged the department’s practices “result in the unjustified deaths of people of color.”
In calling Monday for aldermen to approve the deal, city lawyer Jeff Levine noted the judge in the case barred the city from discussing the fact that Loury was on probation at the time of the shooting, or from showing evidence of Loury’s possible gang affiliation. However, Loury’s family was able to show that the gun found near Loury was empty and that no fingerprints were recovered from it.
Loury was riding in a car which police pulled over after a passenger in another car told officers someone fired shots from the vehicle, Levine said. Loury then ran from the car and an officer chased him. When Loury tried to climb a fence in an alley, a gun dropped from his waistband, which he fell on top of. The officer shot the teen once he saw the teen turned toward him with his gun, Levine said.
The now-defunct Independent Police Review Authority ruled the shooting was justified in an August 2017 report, shortly before the agency became the Civilian Office of Police Accountability. The Loury family requested IPRA to release official police video of the shooting, but it was withheld because he was a minor.
The officer who shot Loury, Chicago Officer Sean Hitz, received no disciplinary action and described the incident. “He retrieved the gun and all in one motion turned around and pointed the gun at me,” Hitz added. “At that point, I fired twice.”
Hitz was in the police academy last year to become a detective, had taken the promotional exam for the role in 2016, and made the hiring list for detective in 2020. “He makes a promotion list while this case is going on?” U.S. District Judge Sharon Coleman asked the attorneys representing the city in a hearing in March 2020. “City, the optics of that look really bad. I’m glad. Good for him.”
