Joseph Guardia, 29, is facing charges of murder and aggravated arson in connection with the attack on Kromelis, who died months after being set on fire on May 25, 2022, while sleeping under blankets on the street.

On May 10, records show, a CTA operator reported that a young man had tossed liquid on him after asking a question about a train stop. The attack at the Oak Park Green Line station was captured on video, and court records show the operator later picked Guardia out of a photo lineup.

Prosecutors did not charge Guardia in the CTA incident. But the state’s attorney’s office is seeking to use evidence of his alleged involvement to help prove intent or state of mind in the later attack against Kromelis, according to a recent court filing.

Prosecutors argued in their motion that both crimes have “peculiar and distinctive features not shared by most offenses of the same type and which, therefore, earmarks the offenses as (one) person’s handiwork.”

Kromelis, a distinctively dapper dresser often seen strolling alone along the streets of downtown Chicago, was attacked while he slept on the pavement in the 400 block of North Lower Wabash Avenue. He died several months later at age 75.

The haunting crime was captured on video by a nearby hotel security surveillance system. Authorities released video stills of Kromelis’ attacker, who had a large dollar sign tattooed on his cheek, and police arrested Guardia two days later. At the time of his arrest, authorities said, Guardia was wearing the same clothing seen in the video.

Guardia, of Melrose Park, told police in a recorded interview that he had found a cup filled with gasoline and set a pile of blankets on fire, according to court records. Guardia said he was not aware that a person was under the blankets, but prosecutors said Kromelis’ head and lower legs were visible.

As for motive, Guardia said only that he was “an angry person.”

In their court filing, prosecutors are seeking to admit the circumstances of the CTA encounter as evidence in the murder case to show “modus operandi, state of mind, intent, knowledge, identity, absence of mistake and/or absence of innocent frame of mind.”

The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled such “proof of other crimes” motions may be granted in limited circumstances. Crimes committed in a similar manner suggest a common offender and strengthen the identification of the defendant, the motion argues.

The train operator said he was stopped at the Oak Park station when a young man in his 20s approached him and said, “Hey, bro, do you know where Harlem is at?” according to a police report. After he told the man it was the next stop, the operator said, the man tossed an unknown liquid on him.

The liquid did not “have a smell to it,” and the operator rinsed himself off with water, the police report said. He was not injured. Images taken from video showed the suspect had a large dollar sign tattooed on his cheek; records show the train operator identified Guardia in the photo lineup on May 27, 2022.

“In both incidents, the defendant was unprovoked when he poured a liquid substance on an innocent stranger,” Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Jane Sack wrote in her motion. “The two incidents are not remote as the May 10 incident occurred only 15 days prior to the present case.”

It’ll be up to a Cook County judge to determine if Guardia’s alleged involvement in the CTA attack should be admitted as evidence in the murder trial. The case is due in court for a status hearing later this summer.

A Tribune review of his criminal record found more than two dozen arrests in three states and other police contacts dating back to 2013 related to allegations of retail theft, battery, burglary, robbery, criminal trespass, domestic battery, reckless conduct, resisting arrest, public intoxication and criminal damage to property. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and hospitalized for suicidal thoughts, records show.

Guardia, who is being held without bond, is represented by the Cook County public defender’s office. His attorney hasn’t responded to the prosecution’s request yet. An office spokesperson declined to comment.

cmgutowski@chicagotribune.com

Darien Harris is seeking compensation in a federal civil rights lawsuit that alleges authorities framed him despite evidence of his innocence. He also is due Thursday in Cook County court, where prosecutors are expected to announce whether they oppose the 31-year-old man’s request for a certificate of innocence.

Harris was an 18-year-old Chicago high school senior near graduation and with a clean criminal record when police arrested him in an ambush-style attack at a gas station that left one man dead and another seriously injured in 2011.

A judge convicted Harris in 2014 of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder and aggravated battery with a firearm. After serving more than 12 years of a 76-year prison term, he won his release in December when a judge vacated his convictions and prosecutors dropped all charges.

Harris received his GED, worked jobs and completed other educational programs while incarcerated. In a recent telephone interview, he told the Tribune he’s enjoyed spending time with family since his release but continues to struggle while “trying to get my life together.”

“I don’t have any financial help. I’m still (treated like) a felon so I can’t get a good job. It’s hard for me to get into school,” he said. “I’ve been so lost. … I feel like they took a piece of me that is hard for me to get back.”

The federal complaint alleges Harris’ conviction was the result of “egregious misconduct” by police who “fabricated evidence, including false witness statements and identifications through such tactics as coercion, threats, fact-feeding, and promises of leniency.” It argues Harris’ wrongful conviction was not “an isolated incident” but rather “part of patterns and practices of systemic police misconduct” at Area 2 headquarters.

Authorities lacked physical evidence linking Harris to the shooting, but the judge at the bench trial said that he based his ruling primarily on the testimony of Dexter Saffold, a man who picked Harris out of a police lineup and identified him in court.

The judge was unaware during the trial that Saffold was legally blind because of glaucoma, court records show. In winning Harris his freedom last year, attorney Lauren Myerscough-Mueller successfully argued that he was wrongfully convicted based on Saffold’s mistaken eyewitness testimony as well as police misconduct.

Saffold testified in 2014 that he was riding his motorized scooter north on Stony Island Avenue near the gas station on June 7, 2011, when he heard gunshots and saw someone about 18 feet away who was aiming a handgun at a person near a car with its hood up. He also said the shooter bumped into him while running away, nearly dropping the gun while trying to put it into a pocket.

Saffold’s eyesight came up only briefly during the trial. Harris’ original attorney asked Saffold if his diabetes affected his vision. He replied yes, then paused and denied that he had vision problems.

But Saffold’s doctor had deemed him legally blind some nine years before the slaying, court records show. In more recent years, Harris’ lawyers cited medical records dating to 2002 that Saffold had publicly filed in various lawsuits regarding his disability. An ophthalmologist also offered his expert opinion that Saffold was legally blind “for years leading up to the crime.”

Faced with the new evidence, prosecutors last year did not fight Harris’ release. They declined to comment on whether they will object to his recent request for a certificate of innocence, which will help Harris expunge his record.

The victim in the shooting, 23-year-old Rondell Moore, had pulled into a gas station in Woodlawn because of car troubles. He put up the car’s hood to inspect the problem, assisted by a local mechanic. Moore’s older brother and a friend also were there.

The station’s surveillance system did not capture the shooting, but prosecutors said the video did show an individual walking away from a black Lexus and around the gas station toward the area where the shooting occurred, then running away shortly afterward. The video showed a man whose thin build and short hairstyle generally fit Harris, but the suspect’s face was not visible.

Moore, who was shot three times, ran from the gas station and died in a nearby parking lot. The mechanic survived bullet wounds to his back and an arm.

Though prosecutors previously maintained they had credible evidence from other eyewitnesses that pointed to Harris’ guilt, the federal lawsuit alleges police misconduct played a role in those identifications.

The alleged getaway driver, who has since died, took the stand during Harris’ trial and recanted his initial identification of Harris. He said Harris was never in his car and police officers coerced him into making a false identification, according to court records and the lawsuit. Police detectives denied at the 2014 trial that they pressured the man to identify Harris.

Harris’ lawyers have argued that the actual offender was a teenager who was killed several months later in another Chicago shooting. An employee of the gas station has identified that man — not Harris — as the shooter, according to the lawsuit, filed last month by Loevy & Loevy attorney Quinn Rallins. The employee, who did not testify at Harris’ 2014 trial, alleges that police tried to coerce him into making a false identification.

A spokesperson with the city’s Law Department did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

cmgutowski@chicagotribune.com

In fact, the teacher obtained his license that summer and started a job at Elmwood Park High School in August 2002. In the following years, according to pending lawsuits, Dallas Till groomed and repeatedly had sex with two underage students at the school.

Three women in all, including Crawford, have filed Cook County lawsuits alleging that Till engaged in sexual misconduct at the Cicero and Elmwood Park schools and that school officials failed to properly investigate or intervene to protect students.

A Tribune review of Till’s case as revealed through public documents and interviews shows multiple missed opportunities by school administrators and teachers to investigate signs of alleged misconduct by the teacher and coach, beginning with Crawford’s complaint in 2002. State law requires school staff to report immediately when “they have reasonable cause to believe that a child known to them in their professional or official capacities” may have been abused.

The first woman to file suit, in June 2021, said she began having sex with Till, her basketball coach at Elmwood Park, when she was a 17-year-old junior following what she alleges were years of “overt” grooming. Her lawsuit also alleges an English teacher read her texts with Till after confiscating her cellphone, then “turned it over” to Till’s first wife, also an Elmwood Park High School teacher.

The woman said her relationship with Till ended when she was 19, not long after he impregnated her and “forced her” to get an abortion, according to the lawsuit.

Another former Elmwood Park student said in her suit, filed in November, that she had sex with Till at school beginning when she was 16 and ending when she graduated. She was one year ahead of the other Elmwood Park student. She alleges in her suit that the same English teacher who was friends with Till’s wife once publicly scolded the teenager at school, calling her a “homewrecker.”

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services told the Tribune that it had no record of receiving complaints about Till’s conduct with students at Morton East or Elmwood Park.

Crawford, now 39 and a nurse, said she found out around fall 2021 that Till was still teaching and hoped her experience was a “one-time thing.” But the following fall, a friend sent her a news article reporting that Till’s latest employer, Riverside-Brookfield High School District 208, had placed him on leave months earlier after receiving a subpoena in one of the lawsuits.

“That night, I went down a deep dark hole. I couldn’t sleep. I was sick all night,” said Crawford, who went on to speak out publicly at a school board meeting about her own allegations against Till. She filed suit last year against Till, J. Sterling Morton High School District 201 and Elmhurst University, where Till fulfilled his student teaching requirement.

Till, 47, was fired from Riverside-Brookfield in January 2023 after school officials determined he had engaged in “immoral and unprofessional conduct of a sexual nature” with two students, including Crawford, at his previous jobs in Cicero and Elmwood Park, according to district records. The district said its internal investigation found he was “untruthful” about the allegations when questioned.

Till’s attorneys have denied the women’s allegations in legal filings, and he has not been charged with a crime. School administrators at Riverside-Brookfield said no complaints have surfaced about Till about his time with the district, where he had worked since 2009, and they moved swiftly to remove him after learning of the first lawsuit.

Till’s Illinois teaching license remains valid through June 2026. An Illinois State Board of Education spokesperson, citing state law, said she “cannot confirm or comment on any specific educator misconduct” case but said the state would automatically suspend a teacher’s license if charged with certain crimes and then revoke it if convicted.

Public records indicate Till has moved to Arkansas. He did not respond to Tribune requests for comment, including a certified letter sent to his Arkansas address.

Elmwood Park Community Unit School District 401, which is being sued by two former students, declined to answer Tribune questions, citing the pending litigation, and denied the Tribune’s request for records related to misconduct allegations against Till, saying it was “unduly burdensome.” Administrators at District 201 in Cicero also declined to comment. In a statement to the Tribune, Elmhurst University said it “never learned of allegations of sexual, or other, misconduct by Till during his student teaching.”

The three women filed their lawsuits anonymously as Jane Does, but Crawford agreed to be publicly identified because she “didn’t want this to get swept under the rug. I wanted it to be known and to be public so they can’t deny they didn’t know this was happening.”

Both she and a second woman who spoke to the Tribune about suing Till said it is infuriating he still is licensed to teach in Illinois. The woman who sued in November, now a 34-year-old mother living in Elk Grove Village, asked to remain anonymous. She, like Crawford, chose a career in health care to “help others since I couldn’t help myself.”

“I’m trying to heal. That’s all I can do,” she said through tears. “It’s been a very hard road. There was no getting away from it. It’s very, very soul wrenching.”

‘I was scared’

Crawford met Till during the second semester of her junior year in 2002 at Morton East, where he was a student teacher in her first-period gym class.

Nine years her senior at age 25, Till was completing a program at her high school through Elmhurst College, where the Michigan native had played football and received a bachelor’s degree in physical education. The school later changed its name to Elmhurst University.

“Thus far, my experiences at Morton have stimulated a great deal of excitement within me,” he wrote in an application to teach at the high school. “I realize the challenges that are presented in the amount of students that attend this school and I would enjoy the opportunity to be a part of the efforts to help students develop into solid and productive citizens.”

Crawford, a student leader in gym class who assisted Till, said she thought he was handsome. She was drawn to his smile and flattered by the “special attention” she said he paid to her.

The two soon began confiding in each other about their personal lives, she said, with the 16-year-old student sharing her heartaches about growing up with divorced parents.

Crawford said she often met Till before and after school and joined him in the dugout at practices and during games while he helped coach sophomore baseball. Her freshman sister typically joined them, she said.

According to her lawsuit, “Till openly and regularly touched (Andrea Crawford) in an increasingly inappropriate and explicitly sexual manner” while other students and employees were present, including “hugging her tightly and for prolonged periods of time, petting and/or stroking her body … and pressing his erect penis against her.”

It also accuses Till of “engaging in conversations of an explicitly sexual nature” with the student, including sending her sexual messages over AOL instant messenger.

“I didn’t think it was weird. It was exciting,” said Crawford, who said she was in AP and honors classes at the school. “Some of the other female students in class would talk about me always being with Till. ‘He likes you. Are you guys together?’ I didn’t tell them we were in a relationship — that we were boyfriend and girlfriend — but I kind of smiled and said, ‘Yeah, he does like me.’”

In mid-April 2002, weeks before her 17th birthday, Crawford said they met in the school parking lot on a Saturday afternoon for a rendezvous. They had not had sex previously, she said.

According to her lawsuit, filed by attorneys Chloe Schultz and David Wise, “Till pinned (Crawford) against his car, groped her, pressed his erection against her body, and attempted to persuade her to get into his car to engage in sexual intercourse with him.”

Crawford said she became frightened and left after making up an excuse: that her mom needed help with an errand.

“I just remember him telling me he has tinted windows and that no one would see us,” she told the Tribune. “In my gut, I was scared. I told him I had to go and I left.”

Crawford said she revealed the relationship to her mother and stepfather weeks later, after her younger sister was accused of forging Till’s signature on a school pass. According to the lawsuit, Till provided the sisters with passes that would excuse them for being late or missing class if they had been hanging out with him. Crawford decided to tell her folks what had been going on, she told the Tribune, so her sister wouldn’t be punished.

“I really struggled with even telling them,” she said. “At this point, I didn’t want Till to get into trouble. I wanted to protect him, but I came to a point where it was either protect Till or protect my sister with the truth, so I just had to.”

Crawford told the Tribune her parents immediately reported the allegations to school authorities. Her lawsuit alleges those officials “failed to promptly respond to and investigate rumors and/or reports of Till’s unprofessional and inappropriate conduct” as well as failing to inform Elmhurst University and the state child-welfare agency.

Her parents did not call police, Crawford and her attorneys told the Tribune, because they thought school officials would notify the proper authorities.

“I felt bad,” she said. “I felt like it was my fault. I didn’t even want to go to the police. I thought, ‘Well, this is enough.’ He’s doing his punishment. He wasn’t ever going to get to teach. ‘I’ve ruined his life enough,’ is kind of how I felt.”

It would be years before Crawford learned the truth: that Till did become a teacher. Public records show the Illinois State Board of Education issued Till his license that July.

When the Tribune requested records from Morton High School District 201 regarding Crawford’s 2002 complaint and the school system’s subsequent investigation, the district said it had none.

The principal at Morton East at the time, Manuel Isquierdo, left the Cicero school system the next year and went on to fill superintendent roles in Texas, California and Arizona, according to his LinkedIn profile. He is not a defendant in any of the litigation but his name appears in the lawsuits filed by the two former Elmwood Park students.

Reached by telephone, Isquierdo told the Tribune he does not remember Till and declined further comment.

Elmhurst University said in a statement that it did not learn of the allegations against Till until after one of the former Elmwood Park High School students filed her lawsuit.

“If Elmhurst University had been advised of allegations of sexual misconduct, action would have been taken,” the statement said. “Based on information to date, there has been no evidence of any communications to Elmhurst University about Till’s alleged conduct in 2002.”

Rumors abound

The next school year, Till started working as a physical education teacher and coach at District 401’s Elmwood Park High School. His references, including one from a Morton East teacher, described his strong work ethic, dependability and “good gentleman qualities,” according to records in his personnel file.

The Elk Grove Village woman who is now 34 began her freshman year as an Elmwood Park Tiger soon afterward, in 2003. She said she was rebellious in high school, in part because of the freedom she had while her immigrant parents worked long hours to provide for their two children.

Till was her gym teacher for all but one semester in high school, she said. He also coached girls basketball and boys baseball and football, records show. “Everyone loved him,” she told the Tribune. “He was a charmer.”

She said Till paid special attention to her and the two shared fun, flirty banter. She confided in him about her personal life, including a toxic relationship with her sophomore-year boyfriend. The two broke up that summer, she said.

It was during her junior year, in spring 2006, that Till had sex with her for the first time in the high school building, according to her lawsuit. She was 16. The suit alleges the sexual encounters continued with regularity through her senior year, always in the school building.

She said: “I knew it was illegal. But I also felt, well, I’m smart enough and old enough to make my own choices — until you grow up and realize, ‘No, you were a complete idiot as a child.’ It never crossed my mind as a 16-year-old that this was a grown man doing this.”

Till, who was married to another teacher and coach at Elmwood Park at the time, never took her out on dates or met her outside of school, the former student said. “I was just convenient, I guess,” she said, “after school at 3 o’clock.”

The woman said the two often texted each other. On his phone, Till saved her number under the name of a baseball player he coached, she said. But he didn’t seem fearful about being found out, she said. “It was so deep-rooted in everyone around him that he’s a good guy. … Everyone just loved the guy so much.”

Although the woman said she didn’t tell anyone about Till’s actions at the time, rumors were swirling around the high school about them — so much so that her younger brother told her other students were teasing him, she said.

“I was known as the girl who slept with her gym teacher,” she said. “It was talked about all the time.”

According to her lawsuit, rumors were so widespread that the English teacher who was friends with Till’s first wife recognized her name during a special class to prep for the ACT, then chastised her as a “homewrecker.”

“I felt very much ashamed and, I mean, embarrassed, as well, because this was happening in front of my fellow students,” the Elk Grove Village woman said. “I felt very defenseless.”

She never told Till about that incident, she said. Their sexual relationship ended when she graduated in spring 2007, according to her lawsuit. She said he signed her senior yearbook with her nickname for him, “Austin,” and thanked her for making things “interesting.”

Till’s first wife filed for divorce in December 2007, citing “extreme and repeated acts of mental cruelty,” according to DuPage County court records. He later married another employee of Elmwood Park High School.

Similar to Crawford, the former Elmwood Park student is now a single mother working in the healthcare field.

Around 2020, she said, another graduate of the school contacted her about Till. The other graduate, who was a year behind her at Elmwood Park, was preparing to sue Till. Knowing the rumors about her and Till, the younger graduate asked if she would serve as a witness. “She said, ‘You know, we have some similarities.’”

At the time, the older woman denied anything inappropriate had happened with Till. “I was trying to bury it,” she said of her mindset.

But in November, she became the last of the three former students to file a lawsuit against Till. She also sued Elmhurst University and Districts 201 and 401. Her attorney, Michael Sorich, said teachers and administrators missed multiple opportunities to intervene. “All of this could have been stopped,” Sorich said.

‘Best coach’

The younger Elmwood Park High School student — now 34 and living in San Antonio, Texas — was the first of the three women to sue, in June 2021. She declined to be interviewed for this story but issued a written statement through her lawyers.

“The Elmwood Park School District should be held accountable for ignoring all the red flags,” it said, in part. “This all could have been prevented if the adults simply did their jobs.”

The woman alleges in her suit that Till had a sexual relationship with her beginning when she was a 17-year-old junior in spring 2007, shortly before the other student graduated.

A gifted athlete as a teen, the younger student met Till in fall 2004, when she was a freshman, according to her lawsuit. The student didn’t get along with her mother at the time and had moved in with her father despite his struggles with alcohol, according to the suit.

Till coached her in basketball, and the suit alleges he took a special interest in her, with the two meeting in the mornings before school for individual training sessions.

By summer 2005, according to the suit, Till began sending her text messages professing he loved her. She called him “home fry” and “big brother,” and he referred to her as “small fry.” He drove her home from late-night practices and workouts.

One time, when the two were doing sit ups next to one another, Till said to her: “So this is what it feels like lying next to you,” according to the lawsuit. “Nearby students heard the comment and audibly reacted with ‘oooh(s),’” the suit states.

The lawsuit alleges Till’s relationship with the student was a source of contention in his first marriage. He told the student that his wife had “reviewed the phone bills, observed the number of exchanged texts, and that she forbade Till from texting or calling (her) and from working out with (her) in the mornings before school,” according to the suit.

After his wife moved out of their home, the lawsuit alleges, he increased his pursuit of the student through numerous text messages and phone calls, and by taking her to the movies. The two began having sex late in her junior year around April 2007, the suit said, with the first time occurring in his home.

“This is exactly how I imagined it,” Till told her, according to the lawsuit.

The same English teacher who was friends with Till’s first wife read the student’s text messages with Till after confiscating her cellphone that spring, the lawsuit states. The suit alleges that Till’s wife, who was the girl’s softball coach, confronted the student about the “inappropriate” texts but “acknowledged that her husband Till, a grown man, was the one who should know better.”

In the written statement provided through her attorneys, Peter Stamatis and Steven Shonder, the former student alleged Elmwood Park High School “staff were well aware of his predatory behavior — even read intimate text messages that he sent me — but did nothing.” The suit alleges the two “regularly” had sex inside the high school.

According to the woman’s lawsuit, she began routinely staying over at Till’s Elmhurst home in the summer of 2007. The student turned 18 that fall.

She was still present in Till’s home, according to her lawsuit, when a school staff member who taught students serving in-school suspensions at Elmwood Park rented a room in the home in January 2008.

The lawsuit alleges the student stopped attending classes in February 2008, at “Till’s urging,” after her senior-year basketball season ended. She had enough credits to earn her diploma, and her high school records show she graduated that June.

In her senior yearbook, Till is listed as the male teacher at Elmwood Park High School with the “prettiest smile” and as its “best coach.”

The teenager’s relationship with Till continued through that summer and fall, when she learned she was pregnant with his child, according to her lawsuit. The suit alleges Till persuaded her to get an abortion and drove her to obtain the procedure.

“Till was terrified that others would find out … and manipulated her with guilt to keep quiet, telling her repeatedly that if anyone found out about what he had done to her, and if he ever went to jail for it, he would commit suicide,” the suit states.

In spring 2009, when she was 19, “he advised (her) that he had met someone new, and with (her) life in shambles, Till directed her to move out … thus abandoning (her),” according to the suit.

The woman’s lawsuit also details a December 2008 incident when someone posted about Till on a website called TheDirty.com, which promised “fresh dirt for your lunchtime enjoyment.” The anonymous post alleged Till was having sex with “his students” and had divorced because of affairs with “other teachers and students.”

Court filings in the suit include a memorandum written by then-Principal James Jennings to his superintendent in which Jennings said he succeeded in getting the website to remove the post and he had contacted River Grove police “to discuss the possibility of tracking the creator of the statement.” He wrote that police said it was “unlikely, but that they would look into it.”

The correspondence does not say if school officials or police looked into whether Till was involved in sexual misconduct with students. Jennings’ memorandum did state that he had contacted DCFS at the superintendent’s behest but the agency did not open an investigation because “there was no known victim or inappropriate action taken by Mr. Till.”

A DCFS spokesperson said the agency after a thorough review found no record of a hotline call concerning Till.

Elmwood Park Community Unit School District 401’s current superintendent, Leah Gauthier, declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. She was not superintendent during Till’s tenure. The district would not release documents related to complaints against Till in response to the Tribune’s records requests. The district said staff would need to review “thousands of pages of records” and the burden on the district “outweighs any public interest in the requested information.”

As principal, Jennings was one of several district staffers who wrote Till a glowing letter of recommendation in February 2009 — two months after the social media posting — when he applied for a teaching position at Riverside-Brookfield High School.

In the letter, Jennings referred to Till as an “excellent role model” for new staff members and “our best coach.”

“Dallas is the type of educator every administrator loves to have on staff,” he wrote. “He is a consummate professional who devotes all of his energy to the children with whom he works.”

Jennings, now the district’s assistant superintendent for finance and operations and chief school business officer, did not respond to a Tribune request for comment. Jennings said in a recent deposition that he was “shocked” by the former student’s allegations, court records show.

Allegations become public

Riverside-Brookfield High School District 208 Superintendent Kevin Skinkis said no one has accused Till of similar misconduct at the high school, where Till coached girls basketball and boys baseball. The district is not a defendant in any of the lawsuits.

Skinkis said Till passed the required background checks when hired and administrators there “had no knowledge” of the allegations against him until being subpoenaed in the Texas woman’s lawsuit about a year after it was filed.

Administrators placed Till on paid leave within days and launched an internal investigation, records provided by the district show. They also notified DCFS and police.

The Riverside-Brookfield Landmark was the first to report the District 208 school board action against Till, beginning in fall 2022. Two of the lawsuits against him now include comments left on the news site alleging his behavior was well known to Elmwood Park students and staff.

“How is this just coming up,” one person wrote. “We all knew about him doing this.” Another commented: “The sad part (is) … all the teachers knew what was going on.”

After reading about the Texas woman’s allegations in the Landmark, Crawford said she felt compelled to attend the next school board meeting.

“I just felt helpless and the only thing I could do or think of in that moment was to go to the school board meeting where he’s a teacher and tell them this happened to me too,” she told the Tribune.

In recorded public comments, Crawford told school leaders at the Oct. 11, 2022, meeting that Till had sexually groomed her 20 years earlier at Morton East and administrators there failed to act on her allegations.

“I ask you to please take this seriously and protect your students and the future generations from him,” she was recorded telling board members. “Please do not fail any more children, as Morton failed me and the students after me.”

Andrea Crawford speaks before the Riverside-Brookfield High School District 208 school board in October about her allegations against Dallas Till and Morton East High School administrators. (RBTV/YouTube)

Several advocates for victims’ rights told the Tribune they were not shocked by the allegations that school officials didn’t handle the Till allegations properly. Even well-intentioned school staff members might want to give their co-worker the benefit of the doubt, especially one as popular as Till, or may be afraid to get involved.

“That’s one of the reasons we have to be really consistent in training on mandated reporting and be clear in the expectations for mandated reporters,” said Carrie Ward, chief executive officer of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault. “Reporting requirements were not created to be optional. We have to be really vigilant.”

The District 208 school board voted unanimously on Jan. 24, 2023, to dismiss Till, and Crawford filed her lawsuit months later. The Elk Grove Village woman came forward with her complaint last November. She did not file a police complaint against Till, but the other women did.

Crawford said she filed a report with Cicero police after her October 2022 school board appearance. Police in Cicero declined to comment for this story. River Grove police Chief Michael Konwinski, whose department has jurisdiction over Elmwood Park High School, said in an email that the Texas woman’s 2021 criminal investigation remains “open but is officially suspended.” He would not comment further.

According to River Grove police records, a detective’s investigation hit a roadblock because of the time that has passed since the alleged crime, with digital evidence such as emails, phone and text messages no longer available. Many witnesses who were subpoenaed as part of the lawsuits did not return the detective’s phone calls, and Till’s criminal lawyer said “his client will not be speaking with (police) under any circumstances,” the records show. Contacted by the Tribune, that lawyer said he was no longer representing Till.

In a recent Tribune interview, Crawford said she feels a sense of responsibility to the other women and wants people who she believes failed to report the allegations to be held accountable.

“I think of the Jane Does and what they’ve had to endure and it just hurts to know it should have never happened,” she said. “It should have been stopped a long time ago. He should have been stopped a long time ago.”

cmgutowski@chicagotribune.com

Hundreds gathered inside Rockefeller Memorial Chapel on the university’s Hyde Park campus to bid farewell to Yarbrough, a fixture in state and local Democratic Party politics who died April 7 with more than two years left in her second term in office.

Yarbrough, 73, had been hospitalized at the time, battling an undisclosed medical condition.

Amid stories about her compassion and determination, Yarbrough was eulogized Sunday at a public funeral replete with the tributes bestowed upon an elected public official who championed causes that helped veterans, homeowners, public health and social justice.

She was elected in 2018 as the county’s first African American and female clerk. Voters reelected her in 2022. Though the tributes largely focused on Yarbrough as an innovator in Illinois politics who helped open the door for other women, her personal life as a wife, mother and grandmother also were honored.

Yarbrough is survived by her husband, Henderson, and the couple’s blended family of six children, 12 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

In a stirring eulogy, former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun said Illinois has lost a visionary and a “beacon of light.” Braun said she was in North Africa when she learned of her beloved friend’s passing and moved “heaven and earth “ to make it in time for Sunday’s funeral. She said the two met more than two decades ago when Yarbrough became a state lawmaker.

“You’d have to be blind not to recognize the transcendent intelligence and curiosity about life that she had,” Braun said. She remembered how the two would commiserate how Black women in politics were often “kicked around for the kinds of things that seem to escape notice” when done by their white male colleagues.

“No offense, white men in the audience,” Braun said, drawing laughter from mourners in the nearly 100-year-old medieval-style cathedral. “But she survived all that and came out even stronger.”

Among those who attended were Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, U.S. Sens. Richard Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other dignitaries.

Pritzker called Yarbrough “a trailblazer” and “a great public servant.”

“Hers was a storied career in which she tirelessly championed bold causes and toiled behind the scenes to get things done,” Pritzker said. “Compassionate, determined, undaunted. She knew that the most important things … had critics and enemies that would tear you down along the road to success.”

Born Aug. 22, 1950, in Washington, D.C., Yarbrough came to Maywood with her family in the early 1960s. She received her bachelor’s degree in business management at Chicago State University and a master’s in inner-city studies from Northeastern Illinois University. She also studied advanced leadership studies at Harvard-Kennedy School of Government.

Yarbrough first ran for the Illinois House in 1998 against incumbent Rep. Eugene Moore but lost in a four-way primary. In 2000, after Moore left to become recorder of deeds, Yarbrough soon won the legislative seat. After serving as a state lawmaker for more than a decade, ascending to assistant House majority leader, Yarbrough left the legislature when she succeeded Moore as recorder in 2012 upon his retirement.

Her most high-profile accomplishments in Springfield included securing money for local projects and successfully working on legislation to ban indoor smoking in Illinois in 2008.

At Sunday’s funeral, Durbin called Yarbrough a “whirlwind of energy” who was quick to step in to help others, including himself. Durbin recalled how his father had died of lung cancer from smoking at age 53, when Durbin was just a teen, later motivating a public health campaign.

“Illinois was a tough, tough state when it came to tobacco,” Durbin said. “It took a courageous person to step up and say, ‘I’ll take this issue on.’ Somebody who really cared. That courageous person was Karen Yarbrough.”

Yarbrough garnered her biggest accolades for her House sponsorship of the hard-fought ban on executions in Illinois in January 2011.

After leaving Springfield, Yarbrough served as the county recorder for six years until her 2018 election as Cook County clerk, a position she held until her death last week. Her office is mainly responsible for administering suburban elections and maintaining property and legislative records. Her death has led to delays in issuing some vital records, including death certificates.

In the interim, Chief Deputy Clerk Cedric Giles has been running the office.

The Cook County Democratic Party will choose a successor to fill the vacancy through the end of the year and a nominee to run in the November election. The party may choose the same person, or two different people. Executive Director Jacob Kaplan said the party will announce an appointment process after Yarbrough’s memorial.

Most interested candidates are abstaining from publicly campaigning until after the service, though state Rep. Marcus Evans, recent state’s attorney candidate Clayton Harris, county Commissioner Stanley Moore and Water Reclamation District Commissioner Kari Steele are reportedly interested.

The party’s next meeting is scheduled for April 22, when new Democratic committee people that were elected in the March primary will be sworn in. Under recently amended county code, each committeeperson “shall be entitled to one vote” when filling the vacancy through December. A candidate is required to receive a simple majority — in this case, 41 — of the total number of votes in order to be appointed.

The single vote changes the typical calculus for any hopefuls: Appointment votes have typically been weighted based on Democratic turnout in each ward or township, meaning candidates could focus on lobbying committeepersons with high shares of the weighted vote to succeed.

Kaplan said recently it is unclear whether that weighted vote will be used to determine who the party puts on the November ballot.

The Cook County GOP’s own nomination for the November ballot will be discussed at the party’s county convention on April 17.

Amid the hymns, prayer and tributes that punctuated Sunday’s funeral service, officiated by Pastor Darius Brooks of Grace Central Church in suburban Westchester, several public proclamations and resolutions also were read.

One came from U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’ office. Harris wrote that Yarbrough broke gender and race barriers and embodied the words of her own mother who told Harris, “You must be the first to do many things, but make sure you’re not the last.”

Others who spoke, including Duckworth and Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, also described her as a pioneer who mentored other women in politics.

“Throughout all the years that I knew her, one of the things I most admired is that I never once saw in her a woman of fear,” Duckworth said. “If she thought she was right, even if she was the only person in the room to hold her opinion, she would plant her flag and refuse to budge.”

Stratton agreed, describing “the weight of being the first or an only” in life.

“It’s not a glamorous fate, rather one that settles on your shoulders, constantly reminding you that one wrong step could land you on your face, crushed under the heaviness of watchful eyes,” Stratton said. “But Karen was never one to be crushed. She used that weight to strengthen and prepare herself for the trials ahead.”

Tribune reporter A.D. Quig contributed. 

The payout will resolve a civil rights lawsuit filed by Jackie Wilson that accused several former Cook County assistant state’s attorneys of railroading him for murders committed by his older brother. It is thought to be among the largest wrongful conviction settlements for a single defendant in county history.

A lawsuit against several Chicago police officers involved in the case will continue in federal court.

Wilson’s case dates to the 1982 slayings of Chicago police Officers William Fahey and Richard O’Brien, who were fatally shot by Wilson’s brother Andrew during a traffic stop. Jackie Wilson, then 21, was driving the car and was complying with the officers’ commands when his brother began shooting.

Jackie Wilson has acknowledged fleeing the scene with his brother, but he has said he did not know Andrew intended to harm the officers. He was later convicted of O’Brien’s murder and acquitted in Fahey’s slaying.

Now 63, Wilson spent more than three decades in prison before charges were dropped at his third trial in 2020; he later received a certificate of innocence.

“As the Cook County courts recognized when granting a certificate of innocence, Jackie Wilson was wrongfully convicted of a senseless and horrific crime,” his attorneys Elliot Slosar and Flint Taylor said in a statement released Thursday. “During his 36 years of wrongful imprisonment, Jackie suffered unimaginable pain and trauma that few people could ever truly understand. With this settlement, Cook County acknowledges and limits the substantial risk that this litigation poses to taxpayers while also allowing Jackie to move forward with what remains of his life.”

A spokesperson for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

The settlement — which does not come with an admission of wrongdoing — is a rare move for the state’s attorney’s office. Prosecutors are often dismissed from wrongful conviction lawsuits because they have near-absolute immunity from such legal actions. Exceptions can be made when their acts are not related to advocating for the prosecution, such as acting as an investigator or serving as a witness.

The payout also has raised eyebrows among attorneys because the federal case is still in its infancy, with court records showing only two depositions taken so far. One of the former assistant state’s attorneys named in Wilson’s lawsuit, Nicholas Trutenko, has a motion to dismiss the case pending before the court.

Trutenko and another assistant state’s attorney, Andrew Horvat, are also facing criminal misconduct charges related to their nonprosecutorial roles during Wilson’s third trial in 2020. Both have pleaded not guilty to the charges in the case, which is currently on hold pending appeal.

Attorneys for Trutenko and Horvat told the Tribune they were not allowed to provide input in the settlement discussions and the payout will have no bearing on the men’s criminal case. Trutenko’s attorney, former Cook County prosecutor James McKay, argues Jackie Wilson is guilty under the legal theory that he was accountable for his brother’s actions because the shooting took place during the commission of another crime — an argument that a Cook County judge rejected when he declared Wilson innocent in 2020.

“The evidence suggests that Jackie Wilson does not deserve 17 cents, much less $17 million,” McKay told the Tribune in a statement. “We all recognize that anything can happen before a federal jury. Success at trial is never guaranteed. Sometimes it makes sense to settle. But why settle this case now? What’s the rush?”

O’Brien’s niece Kelly O’Brien told the Tribune she also objects to the payout. She was about 5 when her uncle — who was also her godfather — was killed, and she grew up keenly aware of the pain her family suffered. Her grandmother, she says, mourned her son’s death for the rest of his life.

“Are you kidding me?” she said when the Tribune told her Thursday about the settlement. “I have no sympathy or pity for this man at all. Oh my gosh … it makes me sick. $17 million? And here my family has suffered all these years.”

Wilson’s attorneys have called on the Chicago Police Department to follow the county’s example and settle Wilson’s lawsuit, which could save the city significant legal fees and eliminate the risk of a steep jury award.

The courts have previously found that both brothers were tortured into giving confessions by Chicago police officers under Cmdr. Jon Burge. Burge and his so-called midnight crew of rogue detectives led the torture of criminal suspects for two decades, coercing dozens of confessions.

Chicago taxpayers have paid more than $130 million in lawsuit settlements and judgments related to Burge’s conduct over the past two decades, according to public records. The amount includes $5.5 million in reparations for torture survivors, which was approved by the Chicago City Council in 2015.

“Now it is time for the City of Chicago to likewise appreciate the serious exposure it faces in this case and act consistently with the promises of Mayor Johnson and his predecessors who have long acknowledged the serious harm that Jon Burge and other Chicago police torturers have inflicted upon Jackie, other torture survivors, and Chicago’s communities of color,” the attorneys’ statement said.

Cook County commissioners are scheduled to vote on the deal this week, which would bring a quiet end to a civil rights lawsuit filed against former Cook County state’s attorneys accused of railroading Jackie Wilson for murders committed by his older brother.

The lawsuit against several Chicago police officers involved in the case will continue in federal court.

Wilson’s case traces back more than 40 years to the slayings of Chicago police Officers William Fahey and Richard O’Brien, who were fatally shot by Wilson’s older brother Andrew during a traffic stop.

Jackie Wilson, then 21, was behind the wheel of the car and was accused of being the getaway driver. Wilson has said he did not know his brother would shoot the officers.

The courts have previously found that both brothers were tortured into giving confessions by Chicago police officers under Cmdr. Jon Burge. Burge and his so-called midnight crew of rogue detectives led the torture of criminal suspects for two decades, coercing dozens of confessions.

Chicago taxpayers have paid more than $130 million in lawsuit settlements and judgments related to Burge’s conduct over the past two decades, according to public records. The amount includes $5.5 million in reparations for torture survivors, which was approved by the Chicago City Council in 2015.

The Wilson settlement — thought to be among the largest for a single defendant in Cook County history — is an unusual step for the state’s attorney’s office. Prosecutors are often dismissed from wrongful conviction lawsuits because they have near-absolute immunity from such actions. Exceptions can be made when their actions are not related to advocating for the prosecution, such as acting as an investigator or serving as a witness.

A spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office declined to comment Tuesday, citing pending litigation.

Wilson, now 63, spent nearly 37 years in prison before charges were dropped at his third trial in 2020; he later received a certificate of innocence. That trial was halted after a special prosecutor alleged then-Cook County assistant state’s attorney Nicholas Trutenko knowingly gave false testimony on the stand.

Jackie Wilson, in prison for 36 years in cop slaying, freed days after confession tossed

Trutenko, who was the lead prosecutor at Jackie Wilson’s second trial, has been accused of concealing a decadeslong friendship with a British con man who served as the key witness at that trial in 1989. Trutenko’s attorneys have said the relationship began after he had left the office for private practice and had no bearing on the case.

Trutenko was charged with perjury, official misconduct, obstruction of justice and violating a local records act in relation to his witness testimony at Wilson’s third trial in 2020. A Cook County assistant state’s attorney who represented Trutenko at the trial, Andrew Horvat, was charged with official misconduct after a special prosecutor alleged Horvat warned him not to ask Trutenko about the friendship during his testimony.

Both men have pleaded not guilty to the charges. The strange friendship between Trutenko and his witness — close enough that the prosecutor later became godfather to the con man’s daughter — took center stage at the men’s criminal trial, which began late last year at the Rolling Meadows courthouse. The proceedings, however, were abruptly halted after a judge limited a key witness’s testimony and the special prosecutor sought a rare mid-trial appeal.

The case is currently before the Illinois 1st District Appellate Court.

Trutenko and Horvat were both named defendants in the Wilson civil rights complaint expected to be settled by the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. Their names will be dropped from the case if the deal is approved.

Horvat’s attorney Terry Ekl said the settlement was between Wilson and the county, without any input from his client.

“Since we’re not part of the agreement, obviously, there’s no admission of wrongdoing,” Ekl said. “It has no impact whatsoever in the criminal case.”

Trutenko’s attorneys could not be reached for comment.

All other former Cook County state’s attorney employees named in the suit will be dismissed if the county board approves the deal. The named defendants include former Cook County prosecutor Lawrence Hyman, who took Wilson’s tainted confession, and the estate of well-known former prosecutor William Kunkle, who was the lead prosecutor in Wilson’s first trial and died in 2022.

The settlement also would prevent another legal discussion of how Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office handled Trutenko’s constitutional rights following his indictment.

In November, Lake County Judge Daniel Shanes, who was assigned the case after the entire Cook County judiciary was recused, barred large portions of testimony from an assistant state’s attorney assigned to the civil actions bureau, ruling that he had an attorney-client relationship with Trutenko in the weeks leading up to Trutenko’s testimony during Wilson’s 2020 trial.

That attorney testified before a grand jury that indicted Trutenko in March 2023.

Shanes delivered a lengthy opinion in which he rebuked the handling of the matter by Foxx’s office, calling the concept of attorney-client privilege a “bedrock of justice.”

“The attorney-client privilege is the oldest privilege in American law. It is the longest standing doctrine of our kind in our jurisprudence,” Shanes said.

Chicago Tribune’s A.D. Quig contributed to this report.

Harris spent 33 years in prison, convicted of murder. During his decades of incarceration, he obtained a college associate degree, volunteered in prison ministries and directed gospel choirs, all while trying to prove his innocence.

Eight months before his death last Thanksgiving at age 68, the Chicago man finally won back his freedom.

When he started serving time he was a young married father from Cabrini-Green who had helped organize youth athletic programs and anti-violence events and worked with prominent figures such as Mayor Jane Byrne and Jesse White, then a state representative.

Harris also was a self-admitted hustler and petty thief on parole for burglary. When police arrested him in the 1989 murder of a promising young graduate student, they cited his shifting stories. He would later say he’d been foolish – naively repeating what police told him to say with an eye on collecting a $25,000 reward.

“I ain’t no angel,” he told the Tribune that year. “But I don’t hurt no one. I’m a thief, but I never been violent in my life.”

The crime was horrific. Armed assailants had abducted 24-year-old Dana Feitler from the lobby of her Gold Coast apartment building, forced her to withdraw money from an automated teller machine and left her unconscious in a nearby alley with a bullet wound in her head.

It would be years before the case against Harris finally unraveled, as allegations of police misconduct, mistaken witness identification, an unreliable jailhouse snitch and other constitutional violations surfaced. A defining moment in his legal battle came when Harris became friends with a cellmate who later made it his life’s work to help clear him.

Last March, a judge finally vacated Harris’ conviction and sentence, and prosecutors declined to try him again. He was out. Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said her office “had determined that Harris didn’t in fact do this” and was “likely actually innocent.”

But, as one struggle ended, another began.

Harris returned to a much-changed city that seemed foreign to him. His former home, Cabrini-Green – a public housing complex once infamous as a symbol of crime and urban blight – had been gradually demolished and replaced by new retail and sleek condos.

Foxx, who spent part of her childhood in Cabrini, told the Tribune she met Harris at an event in early October and sensed a heaviness to his spirit. Though thankful to be free, he was tearful and anxious, she said.

“I couldn’t imagine anything scarier, to me, than prison. But he was scared of a world that was foreign to him,” she said. Foxx said the two swapped stories about “a home that was no longer there.”

She said, “I tried, in that moment, to assure him that he would be OK.”

Relatives and friends say Harris did indeed adapt. He had recently filed a federal lawsuit against the city and several police officers who he alleged framed him. He had big plans for his future.

But fate decided otherwise. Hours after posing for a Thanksgiving Day photo while carving a plump turkey, he was found dead in his niece’s home. Harris died of natural causes, according to his family.

In the wake of his death, the family of the slain woman – the victim of a crime that may never be solved – pledged to continue their anti-violence work and hopes Feitler will be “celebrated and not forgotten.”

The ex-cellmate who became a longtime friend to Harris said the two had so much more they wanted to accomplish together. They planned to share their story with students with the hope of inspiring others.

And Harris’ only son, Jermaine, is reckoning with losing his father for the second time. The first was one day before his 7th birthday, when police arrested the elder Harris.

“The plan was for him to be around a long time,” said Jermaine Harris, now 41.

To him, his father’s main legacy is one of perseverance through a decadeslong ordeal.

“It didn’t break him,” he said.

From informant to suspect

Raised by a single mother who cleaned houses and collected public aid to support her five sons, Lee Harris grew up surrounded by the gangs and drugs that permeated the densely populated public housing complex he called home.

Mildred Harris is described in interviews and court records as a strict but loving mother who kept a tight rein on her boys, providing as much structure as she could with the help of her church. His dad, a cab mechanic with a drinking problem who fathered two of the woman’s sons, did not live with the family or help out much financially.

Lee Harris sang in his church choir and, at his mother’s urging, had part-time jobs as young as age 12 with a paper route and, at 14 in 1969, working for Ronald Hollis’ maintenance company.

Hollis employed Harris for the next 20 years with steady jobs such as window washing and refurbishing buildings, including downtown high rises. Hollis told the Tribune that Harris was “a mischievous kid who ran his mouth,” but one who worked hard and steered clear of serious trouble.

Much of Harris’ early life is documented in a lengthy 1992 sentencing court report. He did not have a juvenile criminal record but struggled in school, dropping out in eleventh grade. In 1979, when Harris was in his 20s, his mother committed suicide by jumping in front of a CTA train. Other family tragedies included his father’s death from cirrhosis of the liver four years later and a younger brother’s murder in 1987.

As a young man, Harris was active in his community. He organized girls’ softball games through an athletic club he co-founded and was instrumental with helping the YMCA bring the Black Olympics to Cabrini-Green. His activism included political canvassing for local Democrats who relied on Harris to collect signatures in Cabrini.

In early 1981, according to court records and interviews, Harris got to know then-Mayor Jane Byrne and her husband during the couple’s three-week stay in the neighborhood to call attention to its violent conditions. Hollis said Harris introduced him to Byrne, White and Cook County Commissioner George Dunne, among others.

“He was for the people,” Hollis said. “He was really trying to bring a different life over there by giving (young people) something better to do, because when you get that many poor people all living together, and ain’t nobody making more than $10,000 a year, you’re going to have nothing but chaos.”

Harris didn’t escape that chaos unscathed. He had a handful of adult criminal convictions beginning at 19, including theft, possession of marijuana and a 1987 burglary. He received a three-year prison sentence for that crime but was paroled after about 16 months, in late May 1989.

Three weeks later, in the predawn hours of June 18, armed assailants abducted Feitler as she returned to her Near North Side apartment building.

Feitler, who was to start graduate school at the University of Chicago the next day, was forced at gunpoint to walk to an ATM. She made two withdrawals totaling $400.

Shortly afterward, a passerby spotted her unconscious body in an alley. Shot once in the back of her head, Feitler languished in a coma for three weeks before dying on July 9.

The case attracted national media attention, and police faced mounting pressure as months passed without an arrest. Feitler’s family offered a $25,000 reward.

Detectives initially had few clues. Surveillance footage from the bank showed only Feitler, not her assailants. But a few witnesses soon stepped forward in response to media coverage.

One man said he saw three Black men that night acting suspiciously in a white car parked near the site of the crime. A woman reported seeing someone she believed was Feitler walking with three Black men that night. The witness, who was walking her dog at the time, said Feitler had made lingering eye contact with her. One of the men had a limp, she said.

Police showed photos and a live lineup of suspects to the dog-walking witness. She identified the same man both times, but he denied involvement and his girlfriend provided him with an alibi. He was never charged, though he did have a distinctive gait, thanks to an earlier shooting injury, that was similar to the limp the witness had described.

With the two witness descriptions, detectives focused their search for suspects on the nearby Cabrini-Green neighborhood where Harris lived. At the time, he was friendly with two police officers assigned to Cabrini who used him as an occasional informant. And so, Harris has said, he thought nothing of it when the patrol officers spoke to him about the attack on Feitler.

Harris would have more than 20 conversations with police over the next few months. Initially, he implicated other men. But in mid-September 1989, prosecutors refused to approve charges against the police’s main suspect based solely on Harris’ statements. According to his attorneys, Harris himself then became the target of the police investigation.

Hollis, more than a decade older than Harris, had looked out for him for 20 years. He attended school events when Harris needed a parent and stood up as Harris’ best man at his wedding. He said Harris was a petty thief at worst who made up stories to please others or appear important.

Hollis said he recalls Harris bragging at the time about reward money, but he had no idea what a dangerous game Harris had been playing with police.

Beyond a reasonable doubt?

Four months after Feitler’s murder, prosecutors charged Harris with aggravated kidnapping, armed robbery and first-degree murder. No one else was ever charged.

Jermaine Harris said that while he can’t recall the circumstances of his dad’s arrest, he does remember that his parents, especially his mother, protected him from what was happening.

At the time, he did not live with his father, who in 1989 was married to another woman. “My mom did a great job of not letting this be too much for me,” Harris said. “She’d say, ‘Go be a 7-year-old kid. These are adult problems.’”

One day after Lee Harris’ arrest, police called the dog-walking witness back into the station to view a lineup that included Harris. The witness said she was almost certain, but not positive, that one of the men she saw with Feitler was Harris.

The other witness – the man who reported seeing the white car – testified that he did not identify Harris in a police lineup.

A key prosecution witness was a jailhouse snitch named David Toles, who testified that Harris admitted he was the triggerman while Toles and Harris were playing cards.

Defense attorneys challenged the convicted felon’s credibility and noted prosecutors had reduced his felony burglary charges to misdemeanors after he told authorities about the alleged confession.

The version of events that Toles said Harris provided, in which the victim was shot in a car, did not fit Harris’ statements to police or the female witness’s account.

Authorities never recovered the murder weapon and had no physical evidence linking Harris to the crime. Their strongest evidence against him was his own words, collected over the few months he was talking to police.

Harris initially told them he witnessed three men run out of the alley as he sat in a coffee shop near the crime scene. After police noted that it was impossible to see the alley from that location, Harris said he was actually outside.

In his final statement to police, Harris said he happened upon Feitler and her abductors on the street and followed them into the alley in hopes of getting some robbery money.

During his trial, prosecutors told the jury Harris provided police with details only the killer would know, including the exact location of the alley where a wounded Feitler was found.

His defense team noted the inconsistencies in his statements. They argued police coached him about key details and Harris repeated what they wanted him to say – in part to try to get the reward money but also because they had been financially supporting him for months.

Several officers testified they had provided housing, food, cash and other assistance to protect their informant from possible retaliation in Cabrini because of his cooperation with police.

A jury convicted Harris of all charges in March 1992, after about four hours of deliberations. Prosecutors sought the death penalty, but a judge instead meted out a 90-year prison term.

Harris did not testify at his trial. At his sentencing, his attorneys read a statement from him in which he said he was sorry for the Feitler family’s “tragic loss” but that he “had no part of it.”

Feitler, who grew up in a Milwaukee suburb, was unafraid of city life, her relatives said at the time. Her family later became active in anti-gun violence advocacy work in her memory.

“We will always miss Dana,” her dad told reporters after the verdict. “We will always have this loss.”

An unlikely friendship

Nearly a decade into his incarceration, Lee Harris got a new cellmate at Joliet Correctional Center, a now-closed maximum-security prison about 50 miles southwest of Chicago.

The two had little in common. Robert Chattler was more than 20 years younger than Harris. A white kid in his 20s who grew up in a Jewish family in an affluent suburb, Chattler’s crimes – burglary and drug possession – were not of a violent nature. His stint in prison would be brief.

Harris, who didn’t smoke but kept cigarettes as currency, offered his new cellmate one and then eventually the whole pack. Chattler didn’t have many privileges, and so Harris arranged it so the younger man could phone his family and get snacks and other items from the commissary.

Chattler said Harris’ outgoing personality made him popular among inmates and prison guards. “He looked out for me,” Chattler said.

But the two didn’t room together long. Chattler admits his chain smoking and taste in music “annoyed the hell” out of Harris, who Chattler suspects complained and got him moved into a nearby cell where smoking was permitted. But Harris continued to check in on him, especially when Chattler’s sister died unexpectedly from viral encephalitis.

“He was a people person,” he said of Harris. “He’d always get involved if someone was down or needed something.”

One of the few times Chattler can recall Harris in a bad mood was the first time the two spoke about his conviction. Harris accused police of framing him.

“Being who I am, this suburban Jewish kid who had nothing but proper interactions with the police, including the one I was arrested for, I was like, ‘Yeah, right. That doesn’t happen. It’s impossible,’” Chattler said.

He didn’t share his doubts with Harris. Instead, Chattler promised to try to help some day. A short time later, state corrections officials moved Chattler to a minimum-security prison to serve out the remaining months of his sentence. As he left the Joliet prison, Chattler said, he stopped by Harris’ cell to say goodbye. He repeated his promise.

He was released in December 2001. With family support, Chattler said he did well. He worked his way up in his father’s advertising business and never returned to the college drug habit that had landed him in prison.

One day, about a year after his release, Chattler began thinking about his old cellmate and the promise he had made. He wrote Harris a letter asking: “Where do I start?”

Harris wrote back quickly. One of the first things Chattler did was find Toles, the jailhouse snitch with a long criminal record who had testified at Harris’ trial. A television journalist helped him track down the man at a Wisconsin jail. Chattler wrote to him, and to his surprise the man wrote back, he said. The two began communicating and Toles, though often cryptic in his responses, which were not dated or signed, was apologetic about Harris.

Chattler said he began to believe Harris might be innocent.

“I felt a responsibility to help him,” Chattler said. “It became my life’s project.”

A long road

In March 2004, Toles reported to the FBI that he had testified falsely against Harris, according to court documents. During a May interview with the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, which took place in a Wisconsin jail, Toles admitted Harris never confessed and that he had lied on the stand at the behest of police.

His recantation was not enough alone to clear Harris, but it did help persuade prosecutors in Foxx’s conviction integrity unit – now called the conviction review unit – to grant Harris’ long-stalled request for forensic testing on the sweatshirt of the man with the odd gait.

The testing, which focused on blood spatter evidence, failed to yield conclusive results linking him to Feitler’s murder.

Chattler, then living in Texas, continued to try to free his friend. He and Harris talked two or three times a week and exchanged letters. Chattler dug into his own pocket to help Harris pay for the calls, special meals on holidays and for his legal needs.

In 2016, attorney Jennifer Blagg agreed to represent Harris. Chattler also had started an online campaign, including a Facebook page and petition drive, to raise awareness and money.

By then, a 2015 investigation published by The Guardian had detailed how Richard Zuley – the lead detective in Feitler’s murder case – had been accused of coercing false confessions through unorthodox and sometimes violent interrogations. It noted that Zuley later worked a stint at Guantanamo Bay, where his interrogation tactics were included in a scathing 2008 Senate investigation into allegations of military torture.

Prosecutors agreed in 2013 to dismiss another high-profile murder conviction that Zuley had been involved in because of constitutional issues raised by the man’s defense. Other police officers involved in Harris’ arrest also were later involved in wrongful conviction cases, sustained complaint investigations and lawsuits, court records show.

A lengthy 2018 feature by the Marshall Project, a non-profit newsroom focused on criminal justice, highlighted Chattler’s efforts and the allegations of police misconduct. Foxx’s conviction integrity unit had again started to investigate Harris’ case as well.

Among the allegations raised in Blagg’s court filings was that police falsified some reports to fit facts in the case. Blagg noted instances when the detectives’ general progress reports differed from official versions. In some cases, she said, a new detail emerged with suspicious timing.

One example concerned the victim’s Tiffany watch. Months after the murder, Feitler’s mother called police to report the family had noticed her daughter’s watch was missing. Blagg said police shortly thereafter indicated for the first time in reports that Harris had mentioned the watch, saying one of the assailants had taken it during the robbery.

Issues also arose related to the lineup where the woman walking her dog had tentatively identified Harris as one of the assailants. That witness told the conviction integrity unit in 2018 that she’d seen a Black man at the police station a couple of times back in 1989. Harris’ attorneys argued that it was Harris, who’d been cooperating with police, and that the lineup was therefore tainted.

Police made Harris their “sacrificial lamb” after prosecutors declined to approve charges against a man Harris had implicated, Blagg argued.

“It also defies reason that Harris would go from being the prosecution’s star witness, being compensated for his meals and housing, to being the only person charged with the crime after (prosecutors) refused to charge CPD’s target,” Blagg said. “The only answer to how this happened is that there was a complete and total failure of our justice system.”

Blagg has suggested the man with the odd gait is the real killer, but he has never been fully investigated. Forensic testing on that man’s sweatshirt in more recent years showed evidence of gunshot powder residue, according to court documents.

The Chicago Police Department declined to comment for this story, citing Harris’ pending lawsuit. Zuley’s attorneys did not answer a Tribune request for comment. In a response to the lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court, attorneys representing the city and the individual officers denied wrongdoing and said Harris’ arrest was based on “police department reports, court documents and (Harris’) oral statements.”

Finding a way

Jermaine Harris said his dad remained a constant presence despite his incarceration, through phone calls, letters, cards and prison visits.

“I would talk to him on the phone four or five times a week,” he said. “My dad would help me with my homework. I got a birthday card every year of my entire life. He would always find a way.”

He said he never doubted his father’s innocence.

“Not once,” he said. “I know he wasn’t always a saint. He told me how he did dumb stuff when he was young.” His father admitted he lied to get the reward money, Jermaine said.

“He told me (police) hung X amount of dollars over his head and he thought that’s the fastest way he could get us all out of the projects,” he said. “He said he trusted these people and it came back and backfired on me.”

He said his father never gave up hope he would one day be free, and so neither did he.

Lee Harris finally won his freedom March 16, 2023. His son brought T-shirts featuring a photo showing the two of them hugging, taken when the younger Harris was in middle school. The shirts read: “Together again.”

Standing before reporters, Harris thanked his supporters – especially Chattler, who flew in from Texas.

“If everyone had a friend like this,” Harris said, “this world would be such a better place.”

Hollis, who said he had sent Harris up to $40 a month for three decades of incarceration, also greeted his old friend. They all celebrated that night at Manzo’s Burger in Morgan Park.

Feitler’s family shared a statement with the media upon Harris’ release. They said members had learned of the development only two days prior. The family noted Harris’ criminal history, confession and the jury’s guilty verdict. The statement said the family is “heartbroken that this epidemic of gun violence remains a horrific plague” decades after their loss.

After leaving Stateville Correctional Center, Lee Harris got busy living. The sports enthusiast attended several Chicago Bulls, Bears and White Sox games. He watched his son play softball. He reconnected with friends, attended concerts and traveled to Arizona, Florida, Mexico and Las Vegas.

Harris stayed with Chattler for about a month at his Texas farm, where Chattler cares for a host of rescue animals. The two went fishing, something Harris had talked about wanting to do if he ever got free. Back in Chicago, Harris lived with a niece on the city’s South Side and volunteered at church, relatives and friends said.

But his re-entry wasn’t easy. At times he slept on the floor because his mattress, compared with his prison bed, was too soft. He struggled with public transportation and once ended up at an airport rather than the sports store he was trying to reach.

And, according to his loved ones, he was afraid of the police and struggled with trust. Harris had health problems, including heart issues, high blood pressure, diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. His son said Harris was repeatedly hospitalized after his release from prison.

In July, he began dating Rhodena Arnold, whom he met through his niece. She said he shared his life story with her during their first date at Navy Pier.

“I loved Lee,” she said. “If you knew Lee, you would have loved him too. There was never a dull moment being with him. He never wanted to disappoint anyone.”

But Arnold also noticed the times Harris was struggling.

“When I met Lee, he didn’t know what to do with himself,” she said. “He would sit across the street at the church on this bench, and, in his words, he’d say, ‘I have a church behind me and a funeral home facing me.’ He was kind of lost.”

Harris got some help from GRO Community, a mental health center that serves Black and brown boys and men in low-income, high-crime neighborhoods. Harris took part in a 16-week re-entry program that offers individual and group therapy. He also worked a temporary, paid job through the program.

Harris impressed the staff, including when he gave up his spot for subsidized housing to someone else in the program. Kiana Nash, a GRO program manager, said Harris did so well, they were working out the logistics of hiring him to work part time at GRO.

“He always brought a positive perspective to everything,” Nash said, adding: “He was one of our success stories. He wanted to do public speaking. He wanted to inspire youth and others.”

Harris graduated Nov. 6. Weeks earlier, in late September, he had filed a federal lawsuit against the city, naming nearly a dozen Chicago police officers and seeking compensation for his incarceration.

He dreamed of owning a downtown home with a balcony view of the lakefront or moving somewhere warm, like Arizona.

Lee Harris’ first grandchild, Amena Jiraya Harris, nicknamed “A.J.,” was born Dec. 5. They never had a chance to meet.

A final goodbye

Harris celebrated his first Thanksgiving out of prison in Chicago with Arnold. She said she noticed he had labored breathing and was sweating. But he was in his usual good spirits, albeit more subdued.

Hours later, she drove him home so he could get a good night’s sleep. She was so busy cleaning up after her holiday party that she didn’t notice he had failed to call to make sure she had arrived home safely.

Early the next morning, when her phone rang as she was leaving for work, she assumed it was Harris. He phoned her each morning with a trademark, “Rise and shine. It’s time to get up!”

Instead, it was Harris’ niece. She had found his body.

Though heartbroken, Arnold said, “I’m also thankful and grateful that he didn’t die in prison and that he was able to come home for a short period of time to see his family.”

Foxx said she felt “gutted” by Harris’ death. Foxx said she still thinks about the day the two met and swapped stories about Cabrini-Green – and how Harris, with tears in his eyes, hugged Foxx and thanked her.

“Inasmuch as we do this work around wrongful convictions and celebrate people coming home, what Lee’s case reminded me of is how difficult that journey can be,” Foxx said. “His description of how scary the world is shook me because here I was thinking it would be glorious to be out. It made me appreciate that we have a lot to do to make sure that outside feels as free as it should.”

For Chattler, the loss of his friend reverberates still. For decades, he has saved their letters, documenting Harris’ journey to exoneration. They had hoped to share their story of friendship and perseverance in public schools and college criminal justice classes.

“He was my best friend,” Chattler said. “I loved Lee. Next to my mom, I don’t think there’s anybody that cared or loved me as much as he did.”

In a recent statement to the Tribune, members of Feitler’s family pledged to continue their anti-violence advocacy work “so that no family ever has to endure the horror that we have experienced since Dana’s murder, as well as the wounds that continue to resurface when victims and their families are forgotten in the national narrative.”

They said Feitler was a two-sport college athlete who was about to embark on her MBA and dreamed of becoming a hospital administrator.

“We’d like to remember who Dana was and ask that she be celebrated and not forgotten,” the statement read. “Not a day has gone by where the memory of Dana, our beautiful 24-year-old sister, daughter, aunt, and friend, has not been present in our family’s lives. Dana was just beginning her life. She was thoughtful and adventurous – with a real zest and excitement for her future.”

Harris died before he could apply for an official certificate of innocence. As for his lawsuit, it’s unclear how his death will impact its outcome. His son is the executor of his father’s estate.

Jermaine Harris said more than 150 mourners packed his father’s memorial services over two days and dozens more called to offer their condolences.

Wearing his “Together Again” T-shirt, Harris told the crowd he will “forever be proud” to be his father’s son.

“He promised me one thing” while incarcerated, Jermaine Harris told mourners at his father’s Dec. 1 funeral. “He said, ‘They will not carry me out of here.’

“Even days where he couldn’t see the end of the tunnel, he saw the light. It’s that perseverance I want everyone to leave here with. Never give up.”

cmgutowski@chicagotribune.com

Suh, who turned 50 earlier this month, was greeted by a half-dozen supporters and his lawyer, Candace Chambliss, legal director of the Illinois Prison Project, about 9:45 a.m. outside the gates of Kewanee Life-Skills Re-Entry Center.

Among his supporters was Sungmin Kim, an immigration attorney and member of Grace Presbyterian Church in Wheeling whose family is giving Suh a place to live. The two have known each other for nearly 20 years. Suh thanked supporters for their steadfast advocacy and celebrated a Korean tradition of eating tofu to “purge the negativity of the past 30 years,” Chambliss said.

A couple hours later, back in the Chicago area, Suh enjoyed a Korean BBQ meal at a Glenview restaurant and then headed to the Wheeling church, where other supporters, including an old high school classmate, welcomed him home.

In a tearful interview, Suh told the Tribune he is overwhelmed with emotions.

“I cannot possibly begin to explain the emotions that are racing through me right now because this is 30 years in the making,” Suh said. “It’s everything from happiness to sadness to guilt to overwhelming elation. I’m so thankful.”

Suh said he wants to continue his college education and work with troubled youths in his community.

“I’ll do well,” he told the Tribune. “I promise.”

Chambliss said Suh found out earlier in the week that his release might be a possibility, but it wasn’t confirmed until less than 24 hours before it happened, when a warden confirmed the news.

“He’s so excited and so ready to start the second part of his life,” Chambliss said. “He’s healthy and has years and years to live his life, which is beautiful.”

Suh had been serving an 80-year sentence for the Sept. 25, 1993, murder of his sister’s boyfriend, Robert O’Dubaine, in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood. Suh has long admitted he pulled the trigger in the premeditated, ambush-style killing. But, in repeated clemency requests, he argued his remorse and efforts to better himself have earned him a measure of mercy.

Suh was eligible for day-for-day credit under sentencing laws in place at the time of the killing. His latest petition for clemency has been pending before the Illinois Prisoner Review Board for several months. Cook County prosecutors did not object to his request to have his remaining prison term commuted to time served.

Meanwhile, a new state law that went into effect Jan. 1 allowed for retroactive sentencing credits, significantly shortening incarceration time for those inmates who qualify. Suh’s attorney estimated he had earned nearly 4,000 days of credit due to his accomplishments behind bars.

“We just hope it’s (the new law) applied generously to everyone,” Chambliss said. “It’s hard to understand why it’s applied to some people and not others.”

A spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Corrections told the Tribune prison officials are diligently recalculating program credits for those eligible under the law and notifying inmates once approved.

Prison records show Andrew Suh’s disciplinary record is nearly perfect over his three decades of incarceration. Besides completing several rehabilitative and educational programs, including becoming a certified optician, he has assisted disabled inmates and volunteered in his former prison’s hospice unit. At Kewanee, Suh also co-authored a prisoner newsletter and is involved in a mentoring program for at-risk youths involved in the juvenile justice system.

Chambliss noted he would have been eligible for parole in 2015 if Illinois’ Youthful Parole law had been in place. The 2019 law acknowledges that young people’s brains are not fully developed and that they lack the decision-making abilities of more mature adults.

DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin, who prosecuted Suh decades ago while an assistant Cook County prosecutor, said Suh should have been required to serve the remainder of his prison term.

“The fact that Andrew was released after serving just over 30 years when he was required to serve 40 for a cold, calculated, premeditated murder is, in my opinion, an affront to justice and the memory of Robert O’Dubaine,” Berlin said in a Friday statement.

At the time of the murder, Suh had a bright future despite a difficult upbringing. His parents, Ronald and Elizabeth, moved from South Korea to Chicago’s Northwest Side in 1976 when Andrew was 2. He was 11 when his father died of cancer. Two years later, his mother was fatally stabbed in the family’s dry cleaning business in Evanston.

O’Dubaine had begun dating Suh’s sister, Catherine, a couple of months earlier. Nearly seven years her senior, O’Dubaine moved into her family’s home immediately after the death of her mother, and 18-year-old Catherine took on the role of guardian to her 13-year-old brother.

Andrew Suh went on to graduate from Loyola Academy in Wilmette, where he excelled academically, played football and was elected class and student body president, school records show. In fall 1993 he was a sophomore at Providence College in Rhode Island, having received a full academic scholarship.

Then he threw it all away.

That Sept. 25, he flew home from college and his sister dropped him off at the posh two-flat she shared with O’Dubaine on North Hermitage Avenue in Chicago. Catherine Suh had hidden a paper bag containing a gun and a plane ticket in the garage.

Andrew Suh waited there for hours until O’Dubaine, responding to a call from Catherine Suh asking for a ride, walked into the garage to get his car. Andrew Suh shot O’Dubaine twice in the neck and head.

The Suhs were arrested separately about six weeks later following an intense police investigation. Authorities said the sister and brother plotted to kill O’Dubaine for his $250,000 life insurance policy.

The slain man’s parents and a sister are now deceased. Other relatives have written to the state prisoner review board over the years urging Andrew Suh’s continued incarceration. The victim’s brother and the retired judge who convicted and sentenced Andrew Suh told the Tribune in the past that they don’t oppose his early release. They said the murder wouldn’t have occurred if not for Suh’s sister, Catherine, who they said should never be set free.

Andrew Suh, too, has said he killed the victim at the insistence of his sister. She was convicted and is serving a life sentence. In earlier Tribune interviews, Andrew Suh has said that he killed O’Dubaine to protect his sister and out of a misguided sense of family honor. His sister, he said, claimed O’Dubaine had been abusing her and squandering their family inheritance on gambling debts.

Suh also said his sister told him O’Dubaine was behind their mother’s 1987 slaying. Andrew Suh told the Tribune in a 2017 interview he became convinced his sister lied and that she killed their mother to inherit an $800,000 estate, though nobody has been charged in that crime.

The siblings are estranged, he said, and haven’t spoken in decades.

Catherine Suh was portrayed in media coverage as a femme fatale who manipulated her younger brother into committing murder. Dubbed “the black widow,” she abandoned him days before their Cook County trials by going on the run while free on bond. Her disappearance created a media frenzy, and the case was featured in January 1996 on a segment of “America’s Most Wanted.”

Catherine Suh, who was convicted of murder in absentia, turned herself in to the FBI in Honolulu that March. Now 54, she is not eligible for parole.

Andrew Suh’s prior appeals, post-conviction petitions and earlier clemency requests to three Illinois governors — George Ryan, Bruce Rauner and J.B. Pritzker — in 2002, 2017 and 2020 were unsuccessful.

As for the 1987 death of the Suhs’ mother, Evanston police said Catherine Suh and O’Dubaine provided alibis for each other on the morning Elizabeth Suh’s body was found under a pile of clothing in her business. She had been stabbed more than 35 times.

In recent years, police have tested old crime-scene evidence with the hope that more advanced forensic testing might reveal the killer’s identity. Authorities recently told the Tribune the testing failed to yield any “actionable leads.”

The Evanston case remains unsolved.

cmgutowski@chicagotribune.com

Harris was an 18-year-old high school senior with a clean criminal record when prosecutors charged him in an ambush-style attack that left one man dead and another seriously injured in June 2011. His conviction was based in part on the testimony of an eyewitness who turned out to be legally blind.

Now 30, Harris spent the last 12 years behind bars fighting for a new trial. He has long maintained his innocence, saying he was at home watching LeBron James play in the NBA finals between the Miami Heat and the Dallas Mavericks.

Authorities freed him from Cook County Jail shortly after 6 p.m. Tuesday. His mother, Nakesha Harris, as well as his wife, Jessica, and other relatives and supporters were waiting for him upon his release.

Harris pledged to try to help free others in prison whom he said were wrongfully convicted.

“Our fight doesn’t stop,” he told reporters outside the jail. “We’re going to continue to fight for others.”

Hours earlier, Nakesha Harris told a Tribune reporter she can’t wait for her son to meet his 5-year-old sister and celebrate the holidays with his family. She also thanked supporters, including the Rev. Corey Brooks and community activist Ja’Mal Green, as well as her son’s legal team, prosecutors and God.

“I’m so excited right now. I don’t even have the words to explain how grateful I am,” his mother said. “This will be his first Christmas with all his siblings in 12 years. He has a 5-year-old sister that he hasn’t met. This will be the best Christmas ever.”

Her son was serving a 76-year prison term after a judge found him guilty of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder and aggravated battery with a firearm following a 2014 bench trial.

Prosecutors lacked physical evidence linking Harris to the shooting, but now-retired Judge Nicholas Ford said at the time that he based his ruling primarily on the testimony of Dexter Saffold, a man who testified that he witnessed the shooting while on his way home from a fast-food restaurant.

The judge was unaware during the trial that Saffold was legally blind due to glaucoma, according to Harris’ attorney, Lauren Myerscough-Mueller. She had argued in court filings that Harris was wrongfully convicted based on mistaken eyewitness testimony and police misconduct.

Saffold testified that he was riding his motorized scooter north on Stony Island Avenue near the gas station when he heard gunshots and saw someone about 18 feet from him aiming a handgun at a person near a car with its hood up. He could see the muzzle flashes and heard more than two gunshots, Saffold testified. He also said the shooter bumped into him while running away, nearly dropping the gun while trying to put it into a pocket.

Saffold picked Harris out of a police lineup and also identified him in court during the 2014 trial.

Saffold’s eyesight came up only briefly during the trial, court records show. Harris’ original attorney asked Saffold if his diabetes affected his vision. He replied yes, then paused and changed his answer, denying he had vision problems.

But Saffold’s doctor had deemed him legally blind some nine years before the murder, records show. As part of Harris’ 2022 post-conviction petition, his legal team cited medical records dating to 2002 that Saffold had publicly filed in various lawsuits regarding his disability. Harris’ attorneys also presented to the court an expert opinion from an ophthalmologist regarding Saffold’s impaired vision.

On Dec. 5, Cook County prosecutors agreed with Harris’ post-conviction request to vacate his conviction and sentence, clearing the way for a new trial. But on Tuesday prosecutors told Cook County Judge Diana Kenworthy they had decided to drop all charges.

“Upon further review of the totality of the evidence the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (CCSAO) has decided against retrying the case against Darien Harris,” according to a statement released by the office of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. “We remain committed to the work of justice in the pursuit of safe and healthy communities.”

About a dozen members of Harris’ family attended the brief court hearing and waited hours later for his release from jail, including his mother. When asked how they will celebrate his first day of freedom, she said: “I’m sure change into his new clothes and eat some real food and see his siblings.”

Myerscough-Mueller said Darien Harris was a week away from graduation in 2011 when arrested. She said he has received his GED, worked jobs and completed other educational programs while incarcerated. She said he hopes to continue his education and move “someplace warm” in the future.

“He spent his formative years in prison,” said Myerscough-Mueller, an attorney with the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School. “He’s still pretty young, so the good news is he has time to build a really beautiful life. We’re very grateful to Kim Foxx’s office for doing the right thing. … I think Kim Foxx herself looked at the case and determined it was not something they would stand behind, given the evidence, that justice demanded this action.”

The victim in the shooting, 23-year-old Rondell Moore, had pulled into a gas station in Woodlawn because of car troubles after 8 p.m. on June 7, 2011. Moore put up the car’s hood to inspect the problem, assisted by a local mechanic who arrived at the station on his bike shortly afterward. Moore’s older brother and a friend also were there.

The station’s surveillance system did not capture the shooting, but prosecutors said the video did show an individual walking away from a black Lexus and around the gas station building toward the area where the shooting occurred, then running away shortly afterward. The video showed a man whose thin build and short hairstyle generally fit Harris, but the suspect’s face was not visible.

Moore, who was shot three times, ran from the gas station and died in a nearby parking lot. The 51-year-old mechanic survived bullet wounds to his back and an arm.

Though prosecutors previously maintained they had credible evidence from other eyewitnesses that pointed to Harris’ guilt, Myerscough-Mueller alleged police misconduct played a role in those identifications. She said the alleged getaway driver, who has since died, took the stand during Harris’ trial and recanted his initial identification of Harris. He said Harris was never in his car and police officers coerced him into making a false identification, according to court records.

The police detectives also testified at the 2014 trial, denying they pressured the man to identify Harris.

Harris’ attorneys said in court records that they have uncovered evidence identifying the actual shooter as another teenager who was killed several months later, also during an ambush-style shooting at a South Side gas station.

Myerscough-Mueller said a gas station employee who did not testify during Harris’ 2014 trial has identified that man — not Harris — as the shooter in the earlier incident. The employee alleged police tried to coerce him into making a false identification, according to the attorney.

Attempts to reach Rondell Moore’s family were unsuccessful Tuesday.

cmgutowski@chicagotribune.com

mabuckley@chicagotribune.com

Records show the teacher sent an email to her principal shortly after Lancaster’s off-duty altercation and said her friend Craig “Wiliams” grabbed the teen because the boy disregarded her directions to line up and directed inappropriate words at her in response. She also told the principal her friend worked for a computer company, according to a redacted incident report obtained by the Tribune.

A CPS spokesperson declined to answer questions about the discrepancies, citing the school system’s ongoing investigation into the altercation. School officials provided the student’s grandmother with the officer’s correct name and occupation the following morning.

The couple have been dating for about 20 years, according to Lancaster’s attorney.

The Tribune obtained the incident report and the teacher’s email as part of an open records request submitted to Chicago Public Schools in October. Lancaster was indicted in November, shortly after the Tribune published a video that shows the veteran officer hitting 14-year-old JaQuwaun Williams near his throat as the boy walked into Gresham Elementary School on May 18.

The school system released the records following Lancaster’s arraignment last month, at which he pleaded not guilty and was barred from stepping on school property.

The teacher declined to comment when reached by the Tribune.

Records show Lancaster, 55, made an off-duty visit to Gresham Elementary in May to bring money to his girlfriend, a math teacher who was directing students into the building before classes began. ?Prosecutors have said the teacher had left the school door open, apparently creating confusion among the students as to whether they were supposed to be lining up or were allowed to enter.

A security recording of the incident, which does not have sound, shows JaQuwaun walking toward the open door with a friend. Before the teen enters the building, Lancaster steps into his path and strikes him in the throat area, according to the video.

The blow sends the teen reeling backward. The teacher steps between them and orders JaQuwaun to stand near the wall. He complies and is allowed to enter the school minutes later.

Both the officer and JaQuwaun have acknowledged the teen said something as he headed toward the open door, though prosecutors say the two offered different accounts about the intended target of the comments.

The teen told the Tribune he was complaining to his friend about a foul that took place on the playground basketball court just a few minutes earlier. In an email to Gresham Principal Kimberly Oliver several hours after the incident, the teacher said the boy had directed his anger at her.

His “response to my statement was stop talking to me bitch along with other inappropriate words while disregarding my direction,” she wrote. “Craig went to grabbed (redacted) and said do not talk to her like that. I instrustioned Craig to let (redacted) go and leave.” (The Tribune is publishing these quotes verbatim.)

A fifth grade teacher who witnessed the altercation described Lancaster in more aggressive terms.

“I observed a man whose name I don’t know shove a student whose name I don’t know in the upper chest/neck area with his full strength,” the teacher wrote in an email to Oliver, also obtained by the Tribune. “He yelled at the student something to the effect of ‘who the (expletive) you talking to?’ multiple times and continued to approach the student as the student walked backward away from him.”

The video shows Lancaster, who is wearing civilian clothes, leaving the schoolyard less than a minute after the incident.

According to a redacted incident report written on school letterhead, Lancaster lifted his shirt and “revealed a badge and gun holster” when a security guard stopped him in the school parking lot. It’s unclear whether the holster held a weapon, according to the report.

The incident report indicates Lancaster’s girlfriend told the principal that Lancaster worked at American Heritage Computer Co., though the Illinois secretary of state’s office has no record of a business by that name. Public records and social media posts indicate Lancaster has a second job working for a security company with a similar name.

Lancaster is a 30-year Chicago police veteran who began his career with the department as a civilian employee. He was relieved of his police powers after a grand jury indicted him last month and remains on administrative duty. Battery is typically a misdemeanor charge in Illinois, though it can be upgraded to a felony if the incident takes place on public property.

Lancaster attorney Tim Grace has said the officer intervened because the teen was a threat to those around him. Grace told the Tribune he believes prosecutors went too far by charging Lancaster with a crime that carries a maximum five-year prison sentence. The officer also could receive probation under the sentencing guidelines outlined in court.

The teen’s family is suing Lancaster and the city of Chicago, accusing the latter of instilling a sense of impunity among the police ranks by failing to investigate and punish misconduct. JaQuwaun’s attorney, Jordan Marsh, said he has seen the teacher’s statement and incident report as part of discovery in the civil case.

“It raises more questions than it answers,” Marsh said. “I just don’t know why there is such a strange series of misstatements and omissions. I don’t want to disparage anyone without having all the information, but it is odd.”

In a recent Tribune interview, JaQuwaun said he repeatedly asked to call his grandmother — whom he calls “Mom” and who has raised him since he was young — as soon as he got inside the building after the incident, but school officials denied his requests. His grandmother said he is seeing a therapist and has had trouble sleeping since the incident.

JaQuwaun is now a 15-year-old freshman at Simeon Career Academy.

sstclair@chicagotribune.com

cmgutowski@chicagotribune.com