Chicago police officer shoots, kills man and woman

In a city troubled by allegations of police misuse of force, a Chicago police officer shot and killed a male college student and a mother of five, both black, early on Saturday morning, and police shot another person at a separate location hours later.

The police department of the nation’s third-largest city is under a federal civil rights investigation for its use of deadly force and officer discipline.

A recently released video of the shooting death of a black teenager by a white officer in 2014 has sparked protests, with activists calling for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s resignation.

The morning’s shooting happened in the West Garfield Park neighbourhood on the city’s west side.

“Upon arrival, officers were confronted by a combative subject resulting in the discharging of the officer’s weapon, fatally wounding two individuals,” police said in a statement.

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office identified the dead as Bettie Jones, 55, and Quintonio Legrier, 19.

Family members of Jones said that Legrier, a sophomore at Northern Illinois University, was home for Christmas and visiting his father, landlord of the two-story wooden frame building where the shooting occurred.

Family members said police were called after Legrier threatened his father with a metal baseball bat. Jones, who lived in the first-floor apartment, was shot through the door, according to her cousin, Evelyn Glover.

There was a single bullet hole in the wooden door. Blood stained the walls and carpet of the tidy apartment, which was decorated for Christmas. Relatives, including children of Bettie Jones, who was a grandmother of 10, were at the building crying and embracing each other.

“This is a wrongful death. How are you just going to fire through the door?” asked Glover, who added that Jones was recovering from ovarian cancer.

Janet Cooksey, Legrier’s mother, told local news channel CLTV her son had recently been suffering from mental illness.

“You call for help and you lose someone,” she said. “That has to stop.”

In a separate shooting, officials said police responded to a call of an assault in the city’s Washington Heights neighbourhood, in the far south side of Chicago, around 1:30 p.m. local time (1930 GMT).

The police department’s news affairs office provided scant information, saying only that no officers were injured and a weapon of some type was recovered from the scene.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the person was taken to the hospital in serious to critical condition.

The Independent Police Review Authority, which reviews police conduct, is investigating both shootings. Emanuel recently replaced the authority’s chief official in response to complaints about the agency’s effectiveness.

High-profile killings of black men by police officers since mid-2014 have triggered waves of angry protest across the country and fuelled a renewed civil rights movement under the name Black Lives Matter.