‘Senseless’ Attack by Chicago Mob Leaves 2 Dead

On a hot, humid evening in one of this city’s toughest South Side neighborhoods, two men accidentally injured three women when their van ran into a porch--and a mob descended and beat the men to death.

Chicago police, who had detained one man for questioning but made no arrests by late Wednesday, ruled both deaths homicides.

“A thug is a thug is a thug is a thug,” said Chicago Police Chief Terry Hilliard. “These are murderers. They killed two innocent individuals.... One was a senior citizen, as far as I am concerned.”

A furious Hilliard promised to bring the killers to justice.

“Do you know how senseless this is?” he asked. “This was a traffic accident, a simple traffic accident. We have traffic accidents down in the [downtown] Loop where people get injured and people don’t beat [the drivers] to death with their hands and fists.”

One of the victims of Tuesday night’s accident was hospitalized in critical condition late Wednesday; the other two women were listed in fair condition.

The bodies of the two men, who also lived in the Oakland area, were taken to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.

The driver of the rental van, 62-year-old Jack Moore, and his passenger and friend, Anthony Stuckey, 49, both died of multiple blunt-trauma injuries, the medical examiner’s office said. They were apparently bludgeoned by fists, feet and sticks, as well as bricks that had fallen from the porch the van had struck.

Police pleaded with residents who saw the melee or perhaps videotaped it to come forward. Neighbors said dozens of people were outside in the humid, 90-degree heat when the accident occurred and estimated that well over 100 gathered after the crash.

“People were everywhere, yelling,” said Sandra Bowen, 20. “Fists were flying, people were screaming, then the cops came with all their sirens, and the ambulances. They shouldn’t have beat those men. But everybody was right there and mad.”

A neighborhood with a few working-class homes and numerous tenements, not far from the prestigious University of Chicago, the Oakland neighborhood is predominantly black and poor.

Although the area has improved somewhat over the last two decades, improvement has been by a matter of degrees. In 1980, Oakland ranked 77th out of 77 Chicago neighborhoods in terms of income, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Some 66% of residents were living below the poverty level and 52% of housing was government-subsidized public housing.

The area was later broken up for study purposes and officially given various seldom-used neighborhood names by the city. But it remains one of the most destitute and dangerous in the city.

The accident occurred shortly after 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Moore, still distraught over his mother’s recent passing, according to local residents, was at the wheel of the van.

Beside him was his longtime friend Stuckey, a mostly unemployed day laborer who was helping to move some of Moore’s mother’s furniture to a storage area, according to Stuckey’s mother, Virginia Stuckey.

Trying to make a U-turn, according to witnesses--for reasons that are unclear--Moore apparently lost control of the rented moving van, ran across a yard, a sidewalk and into a house where several people were gathered.

The van pinned two women, Jenny Lawrence, 18, and Shauna Lawrence, 26, against the porch. A 17-year-old girl was also struck. Police did not immediately identify her. Some members of the crowd, which was overwhelmingly black, according to witnesses, set immediately upon the men in the van, both of whom were also black.

“Instead of rendering aid to the three girls and waiting for police, they pulled the two individuals out of the van and, using their fists and bricks, beat them to death,” said Chicago Police Department spokesman Philip Cline.

Police say the first patrol car was on the scene four minutes after the first call to 911 came in--though it’s not clear how long after the accident the first call was made. Numerous other officers arrived shortly thereafter because the first officer called for backup.

Julia Mitchell, who lives across the street, said she made eye contact with one of the two men immediately after the beating. “His eyes were big and he was scared,” the 29-year-old said. “He looked at me, blinked once and exhaled, and I knew that he had died.”