A judge sentenced a man to life in prison Wednesday for shooting and killing Chicago police Officer Ella French and injuring her partner, marking an emotional end to the case months after jurors viewed harrowing body camera footage throughout a weeklong trial.
Emonte Morgan, 24, was found guilty in March of killing French, seriously injuring Officer Carlos Yanez Jr. and shooting at Officer Joshua Blas during a traffic stop on Aug 7, 2021 on the South Side. Life was the statutory minimum in the case, prosecutors had told Judge Ursula Walowski, who added another 57 years on other counts.
“Your actions turned this into what it is today,” Walowski said. “You made these decisions. You pulled the trigger.”
French, 29, was gunned down after she and her partners pulled over a vehicle around 63rd Street and Bell Avenue occupied by Morgan, his brother, Eric Morgan, and a woman Eric Morgan was dating. The shooting rattled the city and Police Department, and her police work elicited praise in many corners across the city.
Walowski handed down the sentence after family members gave emotional victim-impact statements in a room full of police officers. Morgan’s defense had argued for a 40-year prison term.
French’s mother, Elizabeth French, thanked the prosecutors and investigators in the case, as well as Walowski, before describing the pain she’s felt every day for more than three years.
Photos of her daughter’s childhood — her as a baby, receiving her first communion, graduating high school — can be painful reminders, she said.
“The memories, they sneak up on me sometimes and I am filled with grief and sadness,” French said, her voice cracking. “I don’t know that closure will ever be possible for me … Someday my daughter and I will meet again. Until then I will miss Ella every day.”
Before concluding her statement, Elizabeth French turned to look at Morgan and address him directly. By then, many of the observers and supporters seated in the courtroom were sniffling and dabbing tears from their eyes.
“Sometimes life sucks,” Elizabeth French told Morgan. “It sucked for me when you killed my daughter … but life gives you choices.”
“There was your choice, to become the murderer of my daughter,” she added. “Life in prison means you will still have your life, something you took away from Ella.”
During one of the statements, emotions ran over.
Yanez’s father, Carlos Yanez Sr., himself a retired CPD officer, took a deep sigh as he walked from the courtroom gallery to the witness stand.
The elder Yanez, his voice shaking, recounted the hours after the shooting when he and his wife were rushed to the hospital to learn their son’s condition.
“It was so surreal and painful that I was praying it was me instead of him,” Yanez Sr. said.
Though Yanez remained, relatively, composed during his few minutes on the witness stand, he concluded his statement by raising his voice and looking directly at Morgan seated at the defense table.
“All this pain was brought upon our family by a (expletive) a—— who should’ve been put down a long time ago,” Yanez Sr. yelled.
Morgan’s mother, Evalena Flores, was seated in the gallery, too, just a few feet away from Carlos Yanez, one of French’s partners on the night of the shooting.
As Yanez Sr. yelled on the witness stand, Morgan’s mother yelled, “Your son is a (expletive) a——!”Cook County sheriff’s deputies quickly moved to escort her from the courtroom as Yanez Sr. walked back to the gallery. He yelled at Morgan again.
“I hope you (expletive) rot in jail, you piece of (expletive).”
Prosecutors have said that Emonte Morgan fired multiple shots at the officers after French and two fellow officers stopped a gray SUV driven by Eric Morgan. Emonte Morgan was also shot during the confrontation.
Eric Morgan previously pleaded guilty to aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, aggravated battery with a dangerous weapon and obstruction of justice and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
In arguing for a lighter sentence, Morgan’s lawyers asked for a chance at rehabilitation.
“Emonte Morgan is not beyond redemption. Emonte Morgan is able to be rehabilitated,” assistant public defender Kristine Neal told Walowski.
Before the sentence was handed down, both he and his mother addressed the court. Each claimed that the prosecution was unjust and the street stop that precipitated the shooting was unlawful.
“Ella French was not murdered,” Morgan said, standing at the defense table. “She had an accidental death.”
Addressing reporters after the hearing, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx echoed Walowski’s sentiment that Morgan’s actions — and his alone — were responsible for French’s killing and the catastrophic injuries suffered by Yanez.
“There were choices that the defendant made on that evening that could have left a young woman alive, another officer uninjured and people going home safely to their families,” Foxx said. “This ending, with a young man spending the rest of his life in prison, is what happens when one uses gun violence in the manner in which they did.”
During the trial, jurors repeatedly watched violent footage of the shootings of French and Yanez, as well as the aftermath as officers and doctors frantically tried to save them. They heard testimony from Blas and Yanez, the latter testifying about his long recovery and the injuries he still suffers from.
Yanez was confined to a wheelchair after the shooting but now walks with a limp. He uses hearing aids and wears a prosthetic eye.
Morgan’s defense attorneys, though, had argued that the body camera footage was too close and muffled during the crucial moments of the shootings, making it difficult to discern what happened. They contended that the traffic stop was needless, questioning whether the tragedy could have been avoided.
At one point after a break in the hearing, Walowski asked for those present to observe a moment of silence in memory of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
A short time later, assistant state’s attorney Scott Clark recalled how he told Elizabeth French that Morgan’s sentencing was scheduled for Sept. 11.
“This is a perfectly appropriate date to handle a case like this,” Clark said. “(Ella French is) gone because she chose the life of a hero.”
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