Slain Ill. Police Officer's Bodycam Captures Deadly Clash with Gunman

By Caroline Kubzansky

Source Chicago Tribune

Slain Oak Park Detective Allan Reddins warned a suspect not to draw his weapon moments before the man allegedly fired at him, according to five fraught snippets of body camera footage released Thursday by the Oak Park Police Department.

Reddins, 40, died Nov. 29 while responding to a call of an armed subject in the 1000 block of Lake Street in the west suburb. Jerrell Thomas, of Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood, was shot by other responding officers at the scene outside the Oak Park Library and taken into custody.

The recordings show five perspectives on a minutes long, armed confrontation that made Reddins the first member of the Oak Park Police Department to die in the line of duty in about 85 years.

On his own body camera Reddins gets out of his car and walks over to Thomas, 37, who is standing under a pillar at the library. The entire recording lasts less than a minute.

“Don’t reach, bro,” Reddins says on the recording. “Don’t reach! Keep your hands up!”

The camera shows Reddins’ gun drawn while others yell at Thomas. Then a shot is fired and the detective’s body camera begins to shake as he falls.

The department did not make public any video of officers tending to Reddins but released five sets of body camera footage that depict Reddins, two officers and two sergeants approaching Thomas and telling him to drop his gun. One officer and one sergeant fired on Thomas from some distance, according to the footage.

Before Reddins was shot, a sergeant can be seen approaching a man later identified as Thomas.

“Can I talk to you for second, sir?” the officer asks.

“Hi. How’s it going?” Thomas responds.

“Good, how are you?” the officer says.

Thomas: “I’m all right.”

“No, no, keep your hands. Don’t reach, don’t reach, don’t reach, don’t reach,” the officer instructs.

Seconds later, gunshots can be heard.

Another recording shows an officer running with his gun drawn before he seemingly ducks behind a squad car and fires four shots. Other shots are fired before the officer behind the squad car starts running again toward a collection of officers.

In a different recording, one of the sergeants is shown getting out of his squad car, running up to the library as shots are fired and drawing his own gun. He fires once and calls, “I got him!” then fires again. Thomas can be seen collapsing after the second shot.

“He’s down! I got him! Go, go!” the sergeant calls before running up to Thomas with his gun still drawn.

Another officer then approaches Thomas, who is screaming on the ground, and handcuffs him. Someone asks where he has been hit; Thomas replies his head or his legs.

Someone appears to apply a tourniquet on Thomas, telling him “it’s gonna be tight, it’s gonna hurt, to stop that bleeding.”

Other nearby officers can be heard yelling “Stay down!” as they approach Thomas, who is on the sidewalk with a small pool of blood underneath his head and blood running down his face.

“I fired two shots, I struggled. He’s down,” the sergeant calls into his radio.

The dispatcher calls: “Subject down at 9:38.”

Prosecutors charged Thomas on Nov. 30 with attempted murder of a peace officer, possession of a stolen firearm and unlawful use of a weapon as a felon. A grand jury indicted him last month on 56 criminal counts, including attempted murder, aggravated discharge of a firearm, aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, possession of a stolen firearm and resisting a peace officer. His next court date is scheduled for March 4, according court records.

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