Read More

Read More

Read More

Read More

Leroy Longs, 28, is charged with one felony count of aggravated discharge of a firearm, Illinois State Police said.

A man has been charged in connection with a shooting on the Dan Ryan Expressway Friday.

Leroy Longs, 28, is charged with one felony count of aggravated discharge of a firearm, Illinois State Police said.

Longs was traveling in a vehicle about 9:47 p.m. on Interstate 94 when he allegedly fired shots at another vehicle at 87th Street, state police said.

An officer with the Metra Police Department witnessed the shooting and followed the vehicle Longs was riding in, state police said. The vehicle was stopped at a parking lot near 79th Street and Lafayette Avenue, where Longs and three other occupants were taken into custody.

No injuries were reported in the shooting, state police said. The three other people were released without charges.

Longs was being held at the Cook County Jail awaiting a bond hearing.

Read More

David Liesse is one of about two dozen relatives who lost family members at the LaSalle Veterans Home who are now preparing to file suit against the state and the home for what Liesse calls “all around mismanagement.”

On Veterans Day last November, David Liesse spoke to his father through a window at the LaSalle Veterans’ Home, enjoying the visit despite the limitations imposed by pandemic restrictions.

The two joked and laughed, unaware of the heartbreak that lay ahead.

Two days later, word came that 95-year-old Jerome Liesse tested positive for the coronavirus.

Two days after that, the World War II veteran was transferred to a hospital, and David Liesse was allowed to see him for a compassionate care visit, though he said his father was already “out of it.”

And just two days later, at 1 a.m., David Liesse got the call.

His father was dead.

Gone in just six days, after surviving a world war and living to 95.

“In retrospect, I wish I would’ve asked more questions, but I trusted them, I put my faith in them, I put my father’s life in their hands and, pre-COVID, I had no problems — they were very, very good, very caring to my father,” David Liesse said of the state-run veterans’ home that was his father’s home since 2018.

“But after COVID, it’s just like, nobody knew what to do.”

David Liesse is one of about two dozen relatives who lost family members at the LaSalle Veterans’ Home who are now preparing to file suit against the state and the home for what Liesse calls “all around mismanagement.”

He holds the state liable for the death of his father, a native of the city of Spring Valley in Bureau County.

“They did not take proper precautions with him when they needed to,” he said.

“When I left on that Wednesday, he had absolutely no signs of any illness of any kind, and he was confined to his room, he never left his room, but people came into his room,” David Liesse said. “The virus doesn’t run down the hall on its own.

“Somehow it was brought into his room, and he caught it. So, there had to be mismanagement somehow, that proper care was not taken so the virus was spread.”

Liesse said the staff at the home were “excellent” and “dedicated,” though there would be instances where staff would come in, without a mask, to help his father with his jigsaw puzzles. Still, he points to problems with leadership, detailed in recent reports, as the main issue.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and former department of veterans’ affairs director Linda Chapa LaVia called to offer their condolences shortly after his father’s death — and before the release of reports detailing conditions in the home.

Lawyer Isabel Bacidore and Michael Bonamarte said their firm, Levin & Perconti, plans to file around 20 lawsuits against the state on behalf of David Liesse and family members of other veterans who died at the LaSalle Veterans’ Home.

Joanne Stachowicz is one of them.

Her uncle, Anthony Samolinski, also died in November from the virus. A native of the city of LaSalle, he lived at the home since June of 2016, she said.

The Korean War veteran and his niece would “talk about whatever came to mind,” during her two or three visits each week. Usually, they touched on his experience at the home and the Cubs, his favorite team.

When the pandemic hit, Stachowicz wasn’t able to visit in person, something that “really started to affect” Samolinski, she said.

To try to “keep his spirits up,” Stachowicz would call more, eventually visiting Samolinski outdoors in July when the home allowed it.

But surging cases meant that in-person summer visit would be their last until Oct. 29, when Stachowicz said she was allowed to see her uncle for about two hours because staff felt “mentally, he was kind of suffering with not having any visitors and they were making an exception for me to see him.”

Within three or four days of that visit, Samolinski started to feel ill.

Stachowicz received a call that staff was going to move him to the COVID-19 unit at the veterans’ home. Hours later she received another call asking if she wanted Samolinski to be sent to a hospital now that he was having trouble breathing and running a fever.

Stachowicz approved the transfer, and Samolinski, 88, was moved to the hospital on Nov. 4. He died there on Nov. 18

“We need to do what’s right for the people we’re taking care of, and I feel like that just didn’t happen,” Stachowicz said. “When push came to shove, they let down a lot of us in the care they were providing during this pandemic.”

Bonamarte, the lawyer who represents Stachowicz, pointed to reports released late last year that he said show “horrible mismanagement of the facility.”

“You have a lack of planning, you have a lack of infection prevention plans or policies, major issues with communication, staff training, education, the wrong type of hand sanitizer,” Bonamarte said.

“They just really dropped the ball, and what makes it so much more devastating is that it happens this far into the pandemic when you are nearing the holiday season, you’re nearing the time where there’s some hope in the future that vaccines are going to be coming out in December, in January. It’s truly horrifying what the reports have revealed.”

Thirty-six veterans at the LaSalle home died, and another 36 who lived at state-run veterans’ homes in Quincy and Manteno also died after testing positive for the virus.

A spokesman for the state Veterans’ Affairs Department said in a statement “we are deeply saddened by the deaths of our residents due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and our hearts are with their families. Unfortunately, we cannot comment further due to pending litigation.”

A scathing inspector general’s report released last week detailed miscommunications and mismanagement at the state’s department of veterans’ affairs during the outbreak at the LaSalle Veterans’ Home located about 95 miles south of Chicago.

Before the inspector general’s findings were made public, a pair of reports released in November offered a first look at conditions in the LaSalle home, including use of ineffective hand sanitizer, employees showing up for work after testing positive for the coronavirus and inadequate “hand hygiene.”

Bacidore said the reports released by the state did a good job of “highlighting exactly what needed to be done,” but it’s clear to her and Bonamarte that policies and procedures weren’t implemented early enough to curb the spread of the virus.

David Liesse is still grappling with his father’s death. They used to talk every day. When he found out the home his parents lived in was going to be sold, he nearly called his father before remembering “my dad’s not here to call.”

“There are moments that I’m totally at rest — at peace with him being gone — and then, just like now, it all comes back,” David Liesse said.

He urged others with family members at long-term care facilities not to be afraid to ask questions about the policies and procedures in place.

“Luckily, we’re getting towards the end of this, but there are still people in nursing homes and veterans’ homes who are very, very susceptible to maybe lax procedures that are in place that need to be reevaluated,” he said.

Read More

The chief operating officer and street commissioner are leaving. Last month saw the departures of both Chief Procurement Officer Shannon Andrews and mayoral press secretary Jordan Troy.

Chicago’s chief operating officer and Streets and Sanitation commissioner are leaving City Hall, exacerbating the extraordinary mid-term turnover in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s cabinet.

Chief Operating Officer Anne Sheahan’s resignation is effective at week’s end. Streets and Sanitation Commissioner John Tully intends to retire in June.

Chief Procurement Officer Shannon Andrews left in April to join the county health system. Mayoral press secretary Jordan Troy also has signed off.

Sheahan, Tully and Andrews are holdovers from former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration.

So were Water Management Commissioner Randy Conner, who resigned in late December; Family and Support Services Commissioner Lisa Morrison Butler, who stepped down in February, and Sydney Roberts, head of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, who was forced out last week after Lightfoot publicly ridiculed the slow pace of COPA investigations.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson, another Emanuel holdover, announced May 3 she would not renew her $300,000-a-year contract. She’s exiting CPS, along with her two top deputies.

Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Susan Lee lasted just 16 months and was replaced last week by Lightfoot’s former Police Board colleague, John O’Malley.

Chief Risk Officer Tamika Puckett also stuck around for just 16 months before leaving that newly-created job to become head of cyber risk management at Zoom.

Chief of security Jim Smith, a retired deputy U.S. marshal whose appointment as head of Lightfoot’s bodyguard detail angered Chicago police officers, didn’t make it even close to mid-term. Neither did chief in-house labor negotiator Mike Frisch, deputy communications director Lauren Huffman, deputy press secretary Pat Mullane and chief engagement officer Juan Carlos Linares.

Corporation Counsel Mark Flessner, Lightfoot’s longtime friend and former colleague in the U.S. attorney’s office, resigned as part of the fallout from the botched police raid on the home of Anjanette Young.

Lightfoot claimed she didn’t know about Flessner’s attempts to block WBBM-TV (Channel 2) from airing bodycam video of the raid.

Sources said Lightfoot’s chief of staff, Maurice Classen, has told associates he, too, may be preparing to depart City Hall. Lightfoot is already on her third communications director and third press secretary.

She’s also still searching for a new fire commissioner. Veteran boss Richard C. Ford II had to leave in April after reaching the mandatory retirement age of 63.

And Michael Fassnacht, Lightfoot’s $1-a-year chief marketing officer, is still holding down the fort at World Business Chicago.

Andrea Zopp, yet another Emanuel holdover, stepped down in December from World Business, a public-private job growth agency that will play a major role in rebuilding a Chicago economy decimated by the pandemic and two rounds of looting.

With all of those changes and more, no wonder Lightfoot was somewhat defensive this week when asked about the revolving door at City Hall.

The mayor acknowledged it has been a “difficult year” and “a lot of people are taking stock of where they are” as she approaches the halfway point of her term on May 20.

“I feel very comfortable about where we are as a city, as a mayor’s office. We’ve got great people who are working their tails off every day to service the residents of this great city,” she said.

Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), chairman of the City Council Committee on Health and Human Relations, said he has no idea whether there is an “underlying current for the mass exodus.”

It “could be a mid-season correction.” he said. After a short transition tied to the mayoral runoff prompted her to retain much of Emanuel’s cabinet, Lightfoot may also be getting around to choosing her own people.

But Sawyer said he can’t help but wonder whether the mayor’s abrasive management style and propensity to micromanage and publicly criticize some department heads might be making it difficult for her to retain and recruit good people.

“I don’t know how she treats her department heads. But if it’s anything like with us [aldermen], it’s kind of a top-down approach. There’s no collaboration,” Sawyer said.

He added, “When I talked to [COPA chief] Sydney Roberts, she felt stressed and felt there might have been some undue pressure on her, which might have been a contributing factor to her leaving.”

Sawyer doesn’t buy the argument that pandemic fatigue is causing the revolving door at Lightfoot’s City Hall to spin faster.

Departments like Family and Support Services are about to receive a windfall of federal relief funds “they’ve probably never seen before,” he noted.

“I would consider that more of an opportunity as opposed to a hindrance. This is where I would want to be right now.”

Former independent Ald. Dick Simpson (44th) endorsed Lightfoot and served on her transition team.

Simpson cited three reasons for the heavy turnover: mid-term correction, COVID-19 fatigue and the “works well with others” grade on her report card.

“She gets angry and she speaks out. She has very high standards for what she wants done when and there’ve been crisis after crisis to deal with: the shootings, the pandemic and so forth,” Simpson said.

“I do think there are problems in terms of the mayor’s work with her employees. The demands appear to be too much for some of them.”

Read More

A 31-year-old man was fatally shot Friday in the first block of North Menard Avenue.

Five people were killed and at least 14 others wounded in shootings across Chicago so far this weekend, including a 14-year-old boy who was fatally shot Saturday in Humboldt Park.

About 9:30p.m., he was found in the first block of South Springfield Avenue with a gunshot wound to his abdomen, Chicago police said. The boy was unable to tell officers details of the shooting because of the severity of his injuries.

He was brought to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. He was identified as Eddie Thigpen of Douglas Park by the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

In the weekend’s latest fatal shooting, a 27-year-old man was killed Sunday morning on the Near West Side.

The man was sitting in a parked vehicle with a male friend about 4:25 a.m. in the 1200 block of West 13th Street when the friend demanded money from him, police said.

The man refused and his friend began firing shots, according to police.

The 27-year-old suffered multiple gunshot wounds throughout his body and was taken in critical condition to Stroger Hospital by another friend who was also sitting in the vehicle, police said.

The man was pronounced dead at the hospital, according to police. The medical examiner’s office hasn’t released his identity.

Two other people were killed in Saturday shootings on the West Side.

About 10 p.m., a 36-year-old man was in the 600 block of North Homan Avenue in East Garfield Park when he was shot multiple times, police said. Witnesses told officers the shooter was someone the man knew.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. The medical examiner’s office identified him as Robert Hogan, who lived in East Garfield Park.

Less than a half hour later, a 23-year-old man was fatally shot in Lawndale.

The incident happened about 10:25 p.m. in the 2900 block of West Harrison Avenue, police said. The man was shot in the chest and was transported to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

He was identified as Terrance Billops of Lawndale by the medical examiner’s office.

In the weekend’s earliest fatal shooting, a 31-year-old man was killed Friday night in Austin on the West Side.

About 10:15 p.m., the man was standing in a gangway between two buildings in the first block of North Menard Avenue when someone fired shots at him, Chicago police said.

The man suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the body and head and was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

He was identified as Eujon Eversley of suburban Bellwood, the medical examiner’s office said. An autopsy ruled his death a homicide.

In nonfatal attacks, a 17-year-old boy was wounded in a shooting Saturday.

Just after midnight, the teen boy was dropped off at Norwegian Hospital with a gunshot wound to the leg, police said. He was in good condition.

He would not give details of the incident or the location of the shooting, according to police.

A man was shot early Saturday in West Englewood on the South Side.

The 43-year-old was walking about 1:45 a.m. in the 5600 block of South Hermitage Avenue when he heard shots and felt pain, Chicago police said.

He was struck in the torso and was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in good condition, police said.

At least 12 other people have been shot within city limits since 5 p.m. Friday.

Forty-five people were shot, 5 fatally, last weekend in Chicago.

Read more on crime, and track the city’s homicides.

Read More

Signed to a minor league deal in the offseason, Matt Duffy has arguably been the most valuable bat off the Chicago Cubs bench. One area where the Chicago Cubs excelled during their run of three-straight NLCS appearances was the depth of their bench. Over the past few seasons, several of those pieces have either regressed or […]

Chicago Cubs: Matt Duffy proving valuable off the bench – Da Windy City – Da Windy City – A Chicago Sports Site – Bears, Bulls, Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks, Fighting Illini & More

Read More

With 24 points in 53 games, Suter is on track to finish fourth on the Hawks in scoring. His negotiations as a restricted free agent after just one season could be interesting.

The Blackhawks’ top three scorers this season are going to be Patrick Kane, Alex DeBrincat and Dominik Kubalik, in that order. Entering the season, it wouldn’t have been hard to predict that.

But it would’ve been significantly more difficult to foresee Pius Suter finishing fourth. Suter, with 24 points (including 13 goals) in 53 games, holds a two-point edge over Brandon Hagel entering the last two games of the Hawks’ season Sunday and Monday.

It’s not entirely shocking. Suter was named the most valuable player of the Swiss league last season, like Kubalik the season before, and was the Hawks’ biggest European free-agent addition last summer. But considering how unknown Suter was in North America before January, it would have fallen on the optimistic end of projections for his rookie season.

‘‘We had an idea of what he could potentially bring, but you never know how guys are going to react to the NHL and our team makeup,’’ coach Jeremy Colliton said Saturday. ‘‘We tried him at center. He had played some center in the past, but we didn’t know how he’d respond doing it at the NHL level.’’

Suter reacted well, capably filling in on the first line and developing strong chemistry with Kane and DeBrincat during the months before Kirby Dach returned from his wrist injury.

Despite being a smaller guy at 5-9 and 176 pounds, Suter proved willing to establish position in front of the net, screen the goalie, find loose pucks and rebounds and convert at a high rate.

A remarkable 73% of his even-strength shots have been on goal, the highest rate on the team by far (the average for Hawks forwards is 62.3%). Suter also leads the team in expected goals per shot at .078, beating the team average (.056) by an even greater margin in that category.

For the Hawks, who lose the quantity battle most games — they’re 28th in the league in even-strength shot attempt ratio, with even Suter below water in that regard at 47.7% — it’s important to have players who can maximize their chances, such as Suter, on the roster.

‘‘Defensively, [he has been] very responsible,’’ Colliton said. ‘‘He makes a lot of good reads. He’s found a way to produce at the same time, as well. He’s got to be pretty happy with his first year. Now it’s up to him to not be satisfied with it and continue to build on that.’’

Suter frequently has remarked about the many differences he has discovered between European and NHL hockey, from faceoffs to dump-and-chase techniques, long flights between cities and everything in between. Characteristically, he said last week he’ll take from this season his newfound experience with ‘‘how the games are played, [how] other teams play and [how to] find different ways to create and score.’’

This season sets him up for a raise this offseason, too. He’s in the rare situation of entering restricted free agency immediately after his rookie season. Hawks general manager Stan Bowman and Suter’s agent, Georges Muller, could have some interesting negotiations to try to determine Suter’s value.

Kubalik was an RFA last summer after only one NHL season and signed a two-year contract with a $3.7 million cap hit. But Kubalik’s rookie season was more explosive and impressive than Suter’s. Kubalik was a Calder Trophy finalist; Suter won’t be.

It would make sense for Suter’s 2021-22 cap hit to be in the $2 million to $2.5 million range, but Muller could argue it should be higher. It does sound as though Suter intends to re-sign, regardless.

‘‘I want to be back, for sure,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m confident they’ll figure something out. It’s going to [happen] in the summer. . . . Despite not making the playoffs, it’s been a fun year. And [I] definitely want to see the United Center in full capacity.’’

Read More