A threat, a long standoff, then two dead in Chicago

In the first hours of a daylong standoff between police and a man who eventually fatally shot his hostage and killed himself, neighbors holed up in their apartments heard him screaming and threatening to shoot 22-year-old Tasha Cooks if police didn’t keep their distance, witnesses said Friday.

Shirley Lanier, 39, who lives on the third floor of the South Shore apartment building, said she was awakened around 1 a.m. Thursday by gunfire.

Police later said that Lance Johnson, who lived downstairs on the second floor, was shooting at the family that lived across Lanier’s hall as family members fled after he tried to force his way into their apartment early on Thanksgiving. He had been complaining about a noisy child in the apartment, police said.

“I got up and opened my back door and I saw [Johnson] shooting at people going down the stairs,” Lanier said.

There were no reports of injuries from that gunfire.

But in the panicked moments that followed, Johnson, 21, who police believe may have been mentally ill, turned his gun on another neighbor, Cooks, forcing his way into her apartment.

Lanier said she heard Cooks crying out, and Johnson yelling at Cooks to tell the police to cut off a spotlight aimed at the apartment or he would kill her.

“She was begging for her life,” Lanier said.

Police confirmed that Johnson threatened violence throughout the standoff, which ended when a SWAT team stormed the apartment about 1 a.m. Friday.

Cooks, who worked in a South Side Chicago nursing home, was shot and killed by Johnson before he turned the gun on himself, police said.

Cooks’ family members were grief-stricken Friday after spending Thanksgiving waiting for the standoff to end.

“She was open and kindhearted and a beautiful person,” said her brother, Donzell McKinzie, 23. “She really liked to read and to dance. No way should someone have broken into her house, got her family all mixed up in this.”

Johnson had been arrested numerous times in the last several years. He was convicted on gun possession charges in 2002 and 2003, according to court records. He served 60 days in Cook County Jail on one of the cases and six months in jail on the other, according to court records.

Police were investigating the standoff, said spokeswoman Monique Bond, adding that SWAT negotiators followed protocols intended to end the crisis peacefully.

Nancy Klaric, the building manager, said Cooks had moved into the building in February, and Johnson had moved in three months ago.

He “was really calm and the quiet type,” Klaric said. “If anything, he was too quiet.”

Yet about a month ago, Klaric said, Johnson began repeatedly going up to the third-floor apartment above his and pounding on the door, complaining that his upstairs neighbors were loud.