April 7, 2020 • 29 mins
Police promise Shapearl they’ll do everything they can to solve Courtney’s case, but the detectives won’t release the names of officers who interacted with her son. With nowhere left to turn, Shapearl begins her own investigation and has a serendipitous run-in with the nurse who treated Courtney the night he died.
A co-production of Topic Studios, The Intercept, the Invisible Institute, and iHeartRadio, in association with Tenderfoot TV.
We want to hear from you, email us at info@somebodypodcast.com or leave us a voicemail at 773-270-0121.
Host: Shapearl Wells
Producers: Alison Flowers and Bill Healy
Story Editor: Sarah Geis
Associate Producer: Ellen Glover
Executive Producer, Invisible Institute: Jamie Kalven
Executive Producers, Topic Studios: Maria Zuckerman, Christy Gressman and Leital Molad with Special Thanks to Lizzie Jacobs
Supervising Producer, The Intercept: Roger Hodge
Sound Design: Carl Scott and Bart Warshaw
Mix Engineer: Michael Raphael
Theme Song: “Everybody’s Something,” Chance the Rapper
Additional Reporting: Sam Stecklow, Annie Nguyen, Kahari Blackburn, Rajiv Sinclair, Henri Adams, Matilda Vojak, Dana Brozost-Kelleher, Frances McDonald, Diana Akmakjian, Andrew Fan, Erisa Apantaku and Maddie Anderson.
Translation Support: Benny Hernandez Ocampo and Emma Perez
Fact Checking: Nawal Arjini
Original Music: Eric Butler and Nate Fox of the Social Experiment
Special thanks to Chaclyn Hunt, Maira Khwaja, Andrew Fan, Anwuli Anigbo, Trina Reynolds-Tyler, Sukari Stone, Erisa Apantaku, Craig Futterman, Rick Rowley, Yanilda Gonzalez, Forrest Stuart, Mariah Garcia, Sarah Kinter, Shannon Heffernan, Aaron Moselle, Alan Mills, Vidura Jong-Bahadur, Jason Schumer, Justin Williams and the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation Media Center, Matt Topic, Chris Rasmussen, Bennett Epstein, David Bralow and Julie Wolf.
Theme song “Everybody’s Something” by Chancelor J. Bennett and DJ Ozone with compositions by Roger Karsher, Chuck Magione and James Yancey of Universal Music Publishing Group and Slum Village (R.L. Altman III, Titus Glover/Baatin, J Dilla); recording artist/performance by Chance the Rapper, appearing courtesy of himself and Chance the Rapper LLC.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What you're about to hear in the following episode does
not implicate the Chicago Police in the murder of Courtney
Copeland previously on Somebody. There are still so many unanswered
questions about what led to the death of twenty two
year old Courtney Copeland. Family members say Copeland was on
his way to a friend's house when he was shot
(00:20):
through his car window. A bullet hit his back. He
managed to flag down a police car in front of
the district station and was rushed to a hospital. The
wound was fatal. I believe that not enough has been
done to thought of Courtney murder, Like what would you
like done that I haven't done. I personally would have
went back and reinterviewed everybody to make sure that we
(00:44):
absolutely who ever did this to us, as did you
turn yourself in to ask for forgiveness from God. My
name is Chaparral Else this is a story of my son, Courtney,
a young black man in a fancy car who wound
(01:06):
up with a bullet in his back in front of
a Chicago police station. And it's the story of my
search for the truth. This is Somebody. Everybody. Somebids every
day non bide the snugging. That's right, and so every
(01:44):
black person in this country must rise up and say
I'm somebody. I have a rich, proud and noble history,
however painful and exploded, it has been a Black people
have always had to say it out loud, I am
(02:05):
somebody because the people in charge keep telling us we're not.
I am black, but I'm black and beautiful. This is
something Dr Martin Luther King used to stay in front
of crowds, and Reverend Jesse Jackson has carried on the tradition.
(02:29):
When I hear Reverend Jackson saying that when he tells
you that you are somebody, he reminds you to think
about your own self worth. And even though the world
around you was telling you that you are nothing, you
are somebody. And my son Courtney, he was somebody. I
(02:55):
felt I had the responsibility to force the police to
take a look at his case and say, hey, this
kid is somebody. Hey, everybody, welcome back to Keep Up
(03:16):
Alive with Reverend Jesse Jackson. I'm Santita Jackson. We want
you to call us at one. That's Santita Jackson. She
co hosts the radio show Keep Hope Alive with her
father Reverend Jesse Jackson here in Chicago. Their show airs
on w v o N The Voice of the Nation,
but it used to be called the Voice of the Negro.
The station was a catalyst and getting out the message
(03:38):
of the civil rights movement, and now their mainstream. Let
me go to chappearl from Chicago. What is on your mind?
I've been a frequent caller for years. I'm always on
their Facebook page and I'm so glad you came off
of that Facebook. What's on your money today? Thank you
so much for taking my concern a little good morning
(03:58):
to your panel. I wanted to actually reiterate what Dr
Roberts said. You were one of my best callers, someone
who was very confrontational in a respectful way, very informed,
and very determined to get the story right. So the
thing about Santita, she knows so many people, she's connected.
(04:19):
So after Courtney was killed, she was one of the
first people I called. There was two or three in
the morning, something like that. I immediately became alarmed because
anyone who calls me at that hour it's typically not
good news. And you were in between crying and talking,
and you just kept saying, this is my son and
my baby. You just kept saying, Courtney, my baby, my baby, Santita,
(04:43):
he's been killed. I told her the detectives wouldn't tell
me much of anything, but they wanted to ask me
a bunch of questions. I said, I told you to stop.
You need to record that is right down, everything that
you heard and saw felt, because you will lose it
as we go, as time goes on. Fantitita's advice to
(05:06):
write everything down, that was the best advice I could
have been given. In the beginning, you get the truth.
The cover up happens after the first day or so,
but in the beginning, you get the truth. I went
straight into investigate a mode. I wrote up a timeline
(05:26):
and I made a voice recording on my phone to
keep track of all the details. I told that recorder
everything I was thinking about the night I got the news,
so approximate around two fifteen am, I received a thunderous
(05:51):
beat on my door and I told that recorder about
my conversation with detectives. I begin to question, through my pain,
can I talk to the officer. I need to know
exactly what my son said to him, and they said
(06:14):
that that's the only thing that he had said that
he had been shot. I also told that recorder about
what I really believed happened to Courtney. I believe my
son was stopped and pulled out his vehicle because they
(06:36):
ran the place and they saw a young black man
driving the Hispanic area with a car that was not
registered in a black person's name. Courtney had a co
sign on that BMW his friend Christian Hernandez. It was
(06:57):
his name on the car registration and not Courtneys, which
the police would have known they ran his plates, and
Christian told me that police called him right after Courtney
died to ask who the real owner of the car was.
And another thing we knew. The police had Courtney's name,
(07:20):
the male of his name, and so they would have
learned that Courtney had an I R number. That's a
number that's assigned to you when you're arrested. Let me
give you a little backstory. When Courtney was about seventeen,
he and some friends found a debit card to school
and they used it to buy some Harold's chicken. And
(07:43):
I get this phone call and it's my mom and
she's like, Courtney's in jail. I'm like, who what, Cordneys,
Who does our mare. So I have told her well,
and I don't care what he did. Leave him there.
I remember being so mad at him. Courtney was punished
with the in school suspension. The case was tossed. He
(08:07):
never got rested again, but the I R number followed him,
no matter that he was just a kid and all
that he and his friends did was still some chicken.
(08:27):
A week after Courtney died, me, my husband Brent, and
my mom Renee, we met with police. The station was
old and dilapidated. Brint recorded the whole thing on his
phone from his pocket. Hello. Hi. While we waited, I
(08:53):
was taking calls and planning Courtney's funeral. The wake is
at one, then the uh, the actual services is going
to start at three, so it's a two hour visitation
and then the program obvious a meeting. Can I getting
some soft drinks, water chips, anything at all? Waters, water, water,
(09:15):
free water from you? Yeah, Monday is the barrier, Sergeant Mitchell? No, no, no,
is that team. Hold hold on one second. The three
of us set across from the three of them. I
just wanted to know if you want to speaking next,
and what was your sergeant, Mitchell? Sergeant m Yes, ma'am. Oh,
(09:35):
you're the big wig. Huh. I wrote down their names. Okay, okay,
first of all, you have our condolences. Um. Everybody we've
spoken to. Um, there's someone was a great kid, Um
and nobody's had a bad word to say about them.
And they told us they do everything they could to
(09:56):
find out who killed court this er persons to justice. Okay.
We we we myself, the detectives. I couldn't have two better
guys work in the case. Okay. Um, you know there's
you know, there's some sometimes people are out in that game,
they're they're playing out there and you know, things happen.
(10:17):
This is not the case here, um, And like I said,
you're it provides us with an extra incentive. You know.
We were kind of of the belief that homicide is
you know, it's almost biblical. It's like the worst thing
you can do to somebody. Here. They asked if we
had any questions. My mom, Brent and I we had
a lot, so farre away. Okay. The first question I
(10:39):
hit was who was the officer on the scene that
assisted my son. There were several officers on the scene,
and um, they did they attempted to They were they're
comforting to your son. We know that for a fact. Um,
may we have the n ange of the officers. No,
(11:00):
I am not gonna um not right now. Okay, let's
just okay, okay, okay, um. No, we're not going to
give out names of officers in this okay, Um. But
I can ensure you that they summoned help right away.
(11:20):
They comforted your son. Um, they did all that they
could to help him. Um. You know, you know, you
see and you hear a lot of things. But I'm
actually really proud of the way the officers conducted themselves,
you know. But when I started to press them, it
was clear they hadn't even talked to the officers on
the scene. So when my son approached the cops, what
(11:44):
did he say? From what I understand, even if you
related to the officer, he'd been shot. Um, they called
nine when they got on the radio, and some of
an ambulance. He didn't tell them anything. He didn't elaborate,
like him occurred that. I mean, I know my son,
and that's just like hard to belie. We are going
(12:06):
to speak with all the officers that were on the scene. Okay,
so you haven't done it. The detectives. They see what happened.
This happened over the midnight shift, and Midnight's assigns detectives
to do the scene, and they speak with the officers,
and we're there. I asked them about the cameras right
outside the station, the ones that would have shown what
happened when my son pulled up, about the police station,
(12:27):
the police station. Those cameras don't work. Those cameras do
not that's crazy, they said, they didn't work. I tell you,
I arrived as the young policeman in that station in May.
I went to the district those cameras, and I was
there in January of ninety one until we came here
(12:48):
four years ago. Multiple requests over the years, the district
commander to him, right outside the police station, there's a
big park with three schools. So to tell me those
cameras hadn't worked in that case, that was unacceptable. I
do share. I do share your frustration when things don't
work for us. Cameras don't work, computers don't work, automobiles
(13:10):
don't work. It is very frustrating. But you know what,
we have these hurdles in every investigation. I'm just trying.
How can you use the people have to how I
feel like the job is to serve and protect, but
(13:32):
you can't do it your if you don't have the
property equipment to use it. And that shows me the
lack of priority it is to save lives in this city.
But when I talked to the detectives on the phone
to set up this meeting, one of them told me
that they had already seen a video from the neighborhood.
Came only won't work and you said that you did
find uh? You said you saw him on one camera, right,
(13:57):
I said, I was able to view one and run.
That's what I said. Okay, so you have you you
do have other videos that you need to watch. I'm sorry.
I needed to see what was on those tapes, but
they wouldn't give them to me. They said it was
an ongoing investigation. So I went back home and I
(14:21):
pushed in other ways. I hit the streets and I
got back on the radio. Women have the power to
transform this world. We can end crime and violence if
(14:41):
we all agree to do one thing to share. My
theory is that the gang bangers, the police, everybody is
a suspect until they ruled themselves out. I have to
see the video in order to rule them out whom
(15:13):
Cortney's homegoing service was at the Cicero Community Center. The
funeral home wouldn't work because Courtney had too many friends,
so we had people standing room only. Courtney was everyone's
(15:35):
best friend. He had that gift of making everyone feel important.
Everybody was saying, oh, he was my best friend. He
was my best friend. He was my best friend. He
really was my best friend. I just loved the stories
people told, like Courtney's friend Jova, was just like that
(16:02):
whole chance. The rapper showed up too. He stayed in
the back, you know, walking in the room and seeing
all these familiar faces and all these faces that I
had never seen before, all broken over my friend. You know,
it just hit me like he was just a good dude,
(16:24):
funny dude. Just like realizing like that that somebody had
taken him. You know, it was just hard for me
to to deal with that. Ship there. I put Corney
in a tuxedo. That's what he's wearing his favorite picture.
(16:44):
So I told myself, I'm gonna make him look just
like that. The service, it was so beautiful and sent Tita,
she sang for him, We bring up no You're sang
(17:12):
this song, I think by my hello, you're Jackson. Troubles
of the world. We've been a waitly it says, soon
I will be done with the troubles of the world.
You are supposed to cry at birth and rejoice at death,
(17:36):
because as excited as we are to see a baby,
you don't tell a baby, well, this is gonna be
a tough journey. All of his best friends were his pallbearers.
They wore red bull ties, black vests, and white gloves
(17:58):
as they lowered my son's body into the ground. With
(18:22):
Courtney's funeral now behind us, I was just left to
sit in this new reality that my baby he was
never coming back. But still I didn't know the worst
of what had happened to Courtney. That news was winding
(18:43):
this way across the city of Chicago. It started at
the hospital on the North Side. Someone who worked there
says something to a friend, and that friend talked to
my uncle Marvin, who's on the West side, and Uncle
Marvin called my mom, who's downtown. Uncle Marvin told my
(19:04):
mom that there was a rumor going around the hospital
that Courtney was combative. What they told him about that
he was being combative. We were shocked with that information.
We really were. Police told me he collapsed in front
of the station. So when did he all of a
sudden get uncollapsed and become combative? Plus when he arrived
(19:27):
to the hospital, he was already in cardiac arrest. I
asked the hospital to put together Courtney's medical records so
I can see for myself. Brent and I dropped off
our daughter at school and headed straight for the hospital
for the paperwork. I started flipping through the medical records
(19:48):
before we even left the parking lot. Right away, I
found a document all right up from the E. M. T. S.
It says my son was combative, violent, agitated, a dangerous
to others, and that he was handcuffed. Handcuffed. Police never
(20:09):
told me about any handcuffs, And why would they handcuff
someone who's dying unless they thought he was a suspect
of some kind. Brent was quiet, but I can tell
he was angry. I know how he is, and I
know he didn't do anything to pose a threat. Had
he been a young a young white guy, nice car,
(20:34):
the situation would have been totally different. I thought about
those detectives we had just met with. You know, you
see and hear a lot of things, but I'm actually
really proud of the way the officers conducted themselves. They
were just playing me for food. You know, you can
take some comfort in that that he was there are
people there to care, and that they you know, they
didn't help Brennan. I really need to process all of this.
(20:57):
We felt sick to our stomachs, but we knew we
had to eat, so we went to one of our
favorite restaurants, a place called Sweet Maple's Cafe. We drove
there directly from the hospital. Our hearts were on the floor.
(21:21):
We couldn't stop thinking about the police handcuffing our baby.
Right when we walk in the door, lowing behold. There
she is the e R nurse from the night Courtney died,
you know, the one who had held my hand and
(21:44):
comfort of me. She was sitting with an older woman,
her mother. I told my mom, like, oh my god
that I was like, Mom, you remember the story I
was telling you about when a young man got killed.
I'm like, that's that is his parents right there. Clarissa
Hawkins was work in the e R when Courtney came in.
She was the one who cut the clothes off his body.
(22:06):
I had to ask her, was my baby really handcuffed?
She told me he was. I remember him specifically being
handcuffed to the bed, and so we were like, okay,
where's the police. We need these handcuffs off um and
then maybe maybe like about I said, about a minute,
(22:30):
and the police walked in and they took off the
They you know, took off the handcuffs. Nurse talking said
when she first saw Courtney, his right hand was handcuffed
to the stretcher, which was a problem because they needed
to transfer him to a hospital bed so they can
work on him and they couldn't. And yeah, it was different.
(22:54):
I don't remember ever saying any other gunshot victims come
in handcuffed. She didn't remember anything about him being combative.
So if if somebody's combattled, we know that when they're
coming down, because that's one of the first thing they
tell us for safety. Oh this person's could battlem so
be ready. We never got that report about him that
he was combative because then now our security team has
(23:16):
to come and we have to have extra security there.
We have to have medications on board the calm this
person down. My baby must have been so scared he
was all by himself, but it's a comfort to me
that Nurse Hawkins showed him some compassions or something I
do personally. I remember laying my hands on his arm
and I started praying for him, like so, I don't
know what happened, but please, you know, say this person life.
(23:38):
I started praying. She didn't know anything about Courtney when
she prayed for him, just that he was somebody. We
exchanged numbers and left the restaurant, but the day wasn't
(23:58):
over yet. It wasn't even noon. Next we had to
go to the Tollyard to get Courtney's car back. We've
been getting the runaround for weeks. The BMW was caught
between the police in the impound lot, just stuck in paperwork.
(24:20):
I wanted all of courtney stuff back, the clothes he
was wearing, his book bag, his phone, and most of all,
I wanted the car babay. Courtney's friend, Christian Hernandez, the
guy who co signed for it, had to meet us
(24:41):
there to get it released. And the thing that shook
us both is that there was no blood in the car,
but police said Courtney was shot inside the vehicle. It
simply didn't make sense we told the BMW home. A
(25:03):
lawyer we found was waiting for us to process the
car back in our garage. The lawyer and his colleague
took hundreds of pictures of the BMW as evidence. I
foundly felt like someone was taking my son's case seriously.
They wore gloves and put the items from the car
(25:24):
and ziplock bags and labeled them. I stayed inside the house.
It was too emotional. I've gone through those pictures of
what they found. There's lots and lots of broken glass,
but besides that, it was like looking into my son's world.
(26:01):
There's a yellow sticky note taped to his driver's side
that says marketing director. That's the job Courtney was working towards.
It was his goal, and I promise you looking at that,
it just broke my heart. There was a lighter, a
nutter butter wrapper, an empty Gatoray bottle, lemon line, his
(26:25):
favorite kind, in a parking ticket he was probably hiding
from me. There's one winter glove, no doubt he lost
the other one. He was always on the goal. Item
after item sealed up in those plastic bags. There was
(26:48):
a box for a new iPhone he had just gotten
that phone a week before he was shot, but the
phone itself wasn't there. The police still had it a
few weeks later. When I got it back, the screen
was cracked and the phone was unlocked. Everybody, every Day,
(27:23):
No by these Not No Somebody is a co production
of The Invisible Institute, The Intercept, Topic Studios, and I
Heart Radio in association with Tenderfoot TV. I'm Chaparral Wolls.
This podcast is produced by Alison Flowers and Bill Heally.
(27:47):
Sarah Guice is our story editor. Ellen Glover is our
associate producer for The Invisible Institute. Jamie Calvin is executive
producer for Topic Studios. Maria Zucker and Christie Gressman and
Leta Mallod are executive producers. Special thanks to Lizzie Jacobs
for The Intercept. Roger Hodge, Deputy Editor, is supervising producer.
(28:12):
Sound designed by Carl Scott and Bart Warshaw. Michael Raphael
is our mixed engineer. Our theme song, Everybody's Something is
by Chance the Rapper. Original music for the podcast by
Nate Fox of The Social Experiment and Eric Butler. Additional
reporting by Sam Stecklo Annie When, Khari Blackburn, Ray Jef Sinclair,
(28:35):
Henry Adams, Matilda Voyat, Dana Roso's kellerher Frances McDonald, Diana Archmagian,
Maddie Anderson, Andrew Fan and Rissa Apantaku. Translation support by
Benny Hernandez Occampo and Emma Perez. Fact checking by Noah
Are Jenny Special thanks to Chris Rasmussen, Bennett Epstein, Matt Topic,
(29:00):
David Brelow, and Julie Wolf. We want to hear from you.
Email us at info at somebody podcast dot com or
leave us a voicemail at seven seventy three two seven
zero zero one two one. To learn more about this
case and for links to additional materials, go to our
(29:21):
show page at somebody podcast dot com. You can also
find a list of everyone we want to think there
so many people helped us along the way.
What you're about to hear in the following episode does
not implicate the Chicago Police in the murder of Courtney
Copeland previously on Somebody. There are still so many unanswered
questions about what led to the death of twenty two
year old Courtney Copeland. Family members say Copeland was on
his way to a friend's house when he was shot
(00:20):
through his car window. A bullet hit his back. He
managed to flag down a police car in front of
the district station and was rushed to a hospital. The
wound was fatal. I believe that not enough has been
done to thought of Courtney murder, Like what would you
like done that I haven't done. I personally would have
went back and reinterviewed everybody to make sure that we
(00:44):
absolutely who ever did this to us, as did you
turn yourself in to ask for forgiveness from God. My
name is Chaparral Else this is a story of my son, Courtney,
a young black man in a fancy car who wound
(01:06):
up with a bullet in his back in front of
a Chicago police station. And it's the story of my
search for the truth. This is Somebody. Everybody. Somebids every
day non bide the snugging. That's right, and so every
(01:44):
black person in this country must rise up and say
I'm somebody. I have a rich, proud and noble history,
however painful and exploded, it has been a Black people
have always had to say it out loud, I am
(02:05):
somebody because the people in charge keep telling us we're not.
I am black, but I'm black and beautiful. This is
something Dr Martin Luther King used to stay in front
of crowds, and Reverend Jesse Jackson has carried on the tradition.
(02:29):
When I hear Reverend Jackson saying that when he tells
you that you are somebody, he reminds you to think
about your own self worth. And even though the world
around you was telling you that you are nothing, you
are somebody. And my son Courtney, he was somebody. I
(02:55):
felt I had the responsibility to force the police to
take a look at his case and say, hey, this
kid is somebody. Hey, everybody, welcome back to Keep Up
(03:16):
Alive with Reverend Jesse Jackson. I'm Santita Jackson. We want
you to call us at one. That's Santita Jackson. She
co hosts the radio show Keep Hope Alive with her
father Reverend Jesse Jackson here in Chicago. Their show airs
on w v o N The Voice of the Nation,
but it used to be called the Voice of the Negro.
The station was a catalyst and getting out the message
(03:38):
of the civil rights movement, and now their mainstream. Let
me go to chappearl from Chicago. What is on your mind?
I've been a frequent caller for years. I'm always on
their Facebook page and I'm so glad you came off
of that Facebook. What's on your money today? Thank you
so much for taking my concern a little good morning
(03:58):
to your panel. I wanted to actually reiterate what Dr
Roberts said. You were one of my best callers, someone
who was very confrontational in a respectful way, very informed,
and very determined to get the story right. So the
thing about Santita, she knows so many people, she's connected.
(04:19):
So after Courtney was killed, she was one of the
first people I called. There was two or three in
the morning, something like that. I immediately became alarmed because
anyone who calls me at that hour it's typically not
good news. And you were in between crying and talking,
and you just kept saying, this is my son and
my baby. You just kept saying, Courtney, my baby, my baby, Santita,
(04:43):
he's been killed. I told her the detectives wouldn't tell
me much of anything, but they wanted to ask me
a bunch of questions. I said, I told you to stop.
You need to record that is right down, everything that
you heard and saw felt, because you will lose it
as we go, as time goes on. Fantitita's advice to
(05:06):
write everything down, that was the best advice I could
have been given. In the beginning, you get the truth.
The cover up happens after the first day or so,
but in the beginning, you get the truth. I went
straight into investigate a mode. I wrote up a timeline
(05:26):
and I made a voice recording on my phone to
keep track of all the details. I told that recorder
everything I was thinking about the night I got the news,
so approximate around two fifteen am, I received a thunderous
(05:51):
beat on my door and I told that recorder about
my conversation with detectives. I begin to question, through my pain,
can I talk to the officer. I need to know
exactly what my son said to him, and they said
(06:14):
that that's the only thing that he had said that
he had been shot. I also told that recorder about
what I really believed happened to Courtney. I believe my
son was stopped and pulled out his vehicle because they
(06:36):
ran the place and they saw a young black man
driving the Hispanic area with a car that was not
registered in a black person's name. Courtney had a co
sign on that BMW his friend Christian Hernandez. It was
(06:57):
his name on the car registration and not Courtneys, which
the police would have known they ran his plates, and
Christian told me that police called him right after Courtney
died to ask who the real owner of the car was.
And another thing we knew. The police had Courtney's name,
(07:20):
the male of his name, and so they would have
learned that Courtney had an I R number. That's a
number that's assigned to you when you're arrested. Let me
give you a little backstory. When Courtney was about seventeen,
he and some friends found a debit card to school
and they used it to buy some Harold's chicken. And
(07:43):
I get this phone call and it's my mom and
she's like, Courtney's in jail. I'm like, who what, Cordneys,
Who does our mare. So I have told her well,
and I don't care what he did. Leave him there.
I remember being so mad at him. Courtney was punished
with the in school suspension. The case was tossed. He
(08:07):
never got rested again, but the I R number followed him,
no matter that he was just a kid and all
that he and his friends did was still some chicken.
(08:27):
A week after Courtney died, me, my husband Brent, and
my mom Renee, we met with police. The station was
old and dilapidated. Brint recorded the whole thing on his
phone from his pocket. Hello. Hi. While we waited, I
(08:53):
was taking calls and planning Courtney's funeral. The wake is
at one, then the uh, the actual services is going
to start at three, so it's a two hour visitation
and then the program obvious a meeting. Can I getting
some soft drinks, water chips, anything at all? Waters, water, water,
(09:15):
free water from you? Yeah, Monday is the barrier, Sergeant Mitchell? No, no, no,
is that team. Hold hold on one second. The three
of us set across from the three of them. I
just wanted to know if you want to speaking next,
and what was your sergeant, Mitchell? Sergeant m Yes, ma'am. Oh,
(09:35):
you're the big wig. Huh. I wrote down their names. Okay, okay,
first of all, you have our condolences. Um. Everybody we've
spoken to. Um, there's someone was a great kid, Um
and nobody's had a bad word to say about them.
And they told us they do everything they could to
(09:56):
find out who killed court this er persons to justice. Okay.
We we we myself, the detectives. I couldn't have two better
guys work in the case. Okay. Um, you know there's
you know, there's some sometimes people are out in that game,
they're they're playing out there and you know, things happen.
(10:17):
This is not the case here, um, And like I said,
you're it provides us with an extra incentive. You know.
We were kind of of the belief that homicide is
you know, it's almost biblical. It's like the worst thing
you can do to somebody. Here. They asked if we
had any questions. My mom, Brent and I we had
a lot, so farre away. Okay. The first question I
(10:39):
hit was who was the officer on the scene that
assisted my son. There were several officers on the scene,
and um, they did they attempted to They were they're
comforting to your son. We know that for a fact. Um,
may we have the n ange of the officers. No,
(11:00):
I am not gonna um not right now. Okay, let's
just okay, okay, okay, um. No, we're not going to
give out names of officers in this okay, Um. But
I can ensure you that they summoned help right away.
(11:20):
They comforted your son. Um, they did all that they
could to help him. Um. You know, you know, you
see and you hear a lot of things. But I'm
actually really proud of the way the officers conducted themselves,
you know. But when I started to press them, it
was clear they hadn't even talked to the officers on
the scene. So when my son approached the cops, what
(11:44):
did he say? From what I understand, even if you
related to the officer, he'd been shot. Um, they called
nine when they got on the radio, and some of
an ambulance. He didn't tell them anything. He didn't elaborate,
like him occurred that. I mean, I know my son,
and that's just like hard to belie. We are going
(12:06):
to speak with all the officers that were on the scene. Okay,
so you haven't done it. The detectives. They see what happened.
This happened over the midnight shift, and Midnight's assigns detectives
to do the scene, and they speak with the officers,
and we're there. I asked them about the cameras right
outside the station, the ones that would have shown what
happened when my son pulled up, about the police station,
(12:27):
the police station. Those cameras don't work. Those cameras do
not that's crazy, they said, they didn't work. I tell you,
I arrived as the young policeman in that station in May.
I went to the district those cameras, and I was
there in January of ninety one until we came here
(12:48):
four years ago. Multiple requests over the years, the district
commander to him, right outside the police station, there's a
big park with three schools. So to tell me those
cameras hadn't worked in that case, that was unacceptable. I
do share. I do share your frustration when things don't
work for us. Cameras don't work, computers don't work, automobiles
(13:10):
don't work. It is very frustrating. But you know what,
we have these hurdles in every investigation. I'm just trying.
How can you use the people have to how I
feel like the job is to serve and protect, but
(13:32):
you can't do it your if you don't have the
property equipment to use it. And that shows me the
lack of priority it is to save lives in this city.
But when I talked to the detectives on the phone
to set up this meeting, one of them told me
that they had already seen a video from the neighborhood.
Came only won't work and you said that you did
find uh? You said you saw him on one camera, right,
(13:57):
I said, I was able to view one and run.
That's what I said. Okay, so you have you you
do have other videos that you need to watch. I'm sorry.
I needed to see what was on those tapes, but
they wouldn't give them to me. They said it was
an ongoing investigation. So I went back home and I
(14:21):
pushed in other ways. I hit the streets and I
got back on the radio. Women have the power to
transform this world. We can end crime and violence if
(14:41):
we all agree to do one thing to share. My
theory is that the gang bangers, the police, everybody is
a suspect until they ruled themselves out. I have to
see the video in order to rule them out whom
(15:13):
Cortney's homegoing service was at the Cicero Community Center. The
funeral home wouldn't work because Courtney had too many friends,
so we had people standing room only. Courtney was everyone's
(15:35):
best friend. He had that gift of making everyone feel important.
Everybody was saying, oh, he was my best friend. He
was my best friend. He was my best friend. He
really was my best friend. I just loved the stories
people told, like Courtney's friend Jova, was just like that
(16:02):
whole chance. The rapper showed up too. He stayed in
the back, you know, walking in the room and seeing
all these familiar faces and all these faces that I
had never seen before, all broken over my friend. You know,
it just hit me like he was just a good dude,
(16:24):
funny dude. Just like realizing like that that somebody had
taken him. You know, it was just hard for me
to to deal with that. Ship there. I put Corney
in a tuxedo. That's what he's wearing his favorite picture.
(16:44):
So I told myself, I'm gonna make him look just
like that. The service, it was so beautiful and sent Tita,
she sang for him, We bring up no You're sang
(17:12):
this song, I think by my hello, you're Jackson. Troubles
of the world. We've been a waitly it says, soon
I will be done with the troubles of the world.
You are supposed to cry at birth and rejoice at death,
(17:36):
because as excited as we are to see a baby,
you don't tell a baby, well, this is gonna be
a tough journey. All of his best friends were his pallbearers.
They wore red bull ties, black vests, and white gloves
(17:58):
as they lowered my son's body into the ground. With
(18:22):
Courtney's funeral now behind us, I was just left to
sit in this new reality that my baby he was
never coming back. But still I didn't know the worst
of what had happened to Courtney. That news was winding
(18:43):
this way across the city of Chicago. It started at
the hospital on the North Side. Someone who worked there
says something to a friend, and that friend talked to
my uncle Marvin, who's on the West side, and Uncle
Marvin called my mom, who's downtown. Uncle Marvin told my
(19:04):
mom that there was a rumor going around the hospital
that Courtney was combative. What they told him about that
he was being combative. We were shocked with that information.
We really were. Police told me he collapsed in front
of the station. So when did he all of a
sudden get uncollapsed and become combative? Plus when he arrived
(19:27):
to the hospital, he was already in cardiac arrest. I
asked the hospital to put together Courtney's medical records so
I can see for myself. Brent and I dropped off
our daughter at school and headed straight for the hospital
for the paperwork. I started flipping through the medical records
(19:48):
before we even left the parking lot. Right away, I
found a document all right up from the E. M. T. S.
It says my son was combative, violent, agitated, a dangerous
to others, and that he was handcuffed. Handcuffed. Police never
(20:09):
told me about any handcuffs, And why would they handcuff
someone who's dying unless they thought he was a suspect
of some kind. Brent was quiet, but I can tell
he was angry. I know how he is, and I
know he didn't do anything to pose a threat. Had
he been a young a young white guy, nice car,
(20:34):
the situation would have been totally different. I thought about
those detectives we had just met with. You know, you
see and hear a lot of things, but I'm actually
really proud of the way the officers conducted themselves. They
were just playing me for food. You know, you can
take some comfort in that that he was there are
people there to care, and that they you know, they
didn't help Brennan. I really need to process all of this.
(20:57):
We felt sick to our stomachs, but we knew we
had to eat, so we went to one of our
favorite restaurants, a place called Sweet Maple's Cafe. We drove
there directly from the hospital. Our hearts were on the floor.
(21:21):
We couldn't stop thinking about the police handcuffing our baby.
Right when we walk in the door, lowing behold. There
she is the e R nurse from the night Courtney died,
you know, the one who had held my hand and
(21:44):
comfort of me. She was sitting with an older woman,
her mother. I told my mom, like, oh my god
that I was like, Mom, you remember the story I
was telling you about when a young man got killed.
I'm like, that's that is his parents right there. Clarissa
Hawkins was work in the e R when Courtney came in.
She was the one who cut the clothes off his body.
(22:06):
I had to ask her, was my baby really handcuffed?
She told me he was. I remember him specifically being
handcuffed to the bed, and so we were like, okay,
where's the police. We need these handcuffs off um and
then maybe maybe like about I said, about a minute,
(22:30):
and the police walked in and they took off the
They you know, took off the handcuffs. Nurse talking said
when she first saw Courtney, his right hand was handcuffed
to the stretcher, which was a problem because they needed
to transfer him to a hospital bed so they can
work on him and they couldn't. And yeah, it was different.
(22:54):
I don't remember ever saying any other gunshot victims come
in handcuffed. She didn't remember anything about him being combative.
So if if somebody's combattled, we know that when they're
coming down, because that's one of the first thing they
tell us for safety. Oh this person's could battlem so
be ready. We never got that report about him that
he was combative because then now our security team has
(23:16):
to come and we have to have extra security there.
We have to have medications on board the calm this
person down. My baby must have been so scared he
was all by himself, but it's a comfort to me
that Nurse Hawkins showed him some compassions or something I
do personally. I remember laying my hands on his arm
and I started praying for him, like so, I don't
know what happened, but please, you know, say this person life.
(23:38):
I started praying. She didn't know anything about Courtney when
she prayed for him, just that he was somebody. We
exchanged numbers and left the restaurant, but the day wasn't
(23:58):
over yet. It wasn't even noon. Next we had to
go to the Tollyard to get Courtney's car back. We've
been getting the runaround for weeks. The BMW was caught
between the police in the impound lot, just stuck in paperwork.
(24:20):
I wanted all of courtney stuff back, the clothes he
was wearing, his book bag, his phone, and most of all,
I wanted the car babay. Courtney's friend, Christian Hernandez, the
guy who co signed for it, had to meet us
(24:41):
there to get it released. And the thing that shook
us both is that there was no blood in the car,
but police said Courtney was shot inside the vehicle. It
simply didn't make sense we told the BMW home. A
(25:03):
lawyer we found was waiting for us to process the
car back in our garage. The lawyer and his colleague
took hundreds of pictures of the BMW as evidence. I
foundly felt like someone was taking my son's case seriously.
They wore gloves and put the items from the car
(25:24):
and ziplock bags and labeled them. I stayed inside the house.
It was too emotional. I've gone through those pictures of
what they found. There's lots and lots of broken glass,
but besides that, it was like looking into my son's world.
(26:01):
There's a yellow sticky note taped to his driver's side
that says marketing director. That's the job Courtney was working towards.
It was his goal, and I promise you looking at that,
it just broke my heart. There was a lighter, a
nutter butter wrapper, an empty Gatoray bottle, lemon line, his
(26:25):
favorite kind, in a parking ticket he was probably hiding
from me. There's one winter glove, no doubt he lost
the other one. He was always on the goal. Item
after item sealed up in those plastic bags. There was
(26:48):
a box for a new iPhone he had just gotten
that phone a week before he was shot, but the
phone itself wasn't there. The police still had it a
few weeks later. When I got it back, the screen
was cracked and the phone was unlocked. Everybody, every Day,
(27:23):
No by these Not No Somebody is a co production
of The Invisible Institute, The Intercept, Topic Studios, and I
Heart Radio in association with Tenderfoot TV. I'm Chaparral Wolls.
This podcast is produced by Alison Flowers and Bill Heally.
(27:47):
Sarah Guice is our story editor. Ellen Glover is our
associate producer for The Invisible Institute. Jamie Calvin is executive
producer for Topic Studios. Maria Zucker and Christie Gressman and
Leta Mallod are executive producers. Special thanks to Lizzie Jacobs
for The Intercept. Roger Hodge, Deputy Editor, is supervising producer.
(28:12):
Sound designed by Carl Scott and Bart Warshaw. Michael Raphael
is our mixed engineer. Our theme song, Everybody's Something is
by Chance the Rapper. Original music for the podcast by
Nate Fox of The Social Experiment and Eric Butler. Additional
reporting by Sam Stecklo Annie When, Khari Blackburn, Ray Jef Sinclair,
(28:35):
Henry Adams, Matilda Voyat, Dana Roso's kellerher Frances McDonald, Diana Archmagian,
Maddie Anderson, Andrew Fan and Rissa Apantaku. Translation support by
Benny Hernandez Occampo and Emma Perez. Fact checking by Noah
Are Jenny Special thanks to Chris Rasmussen, Bennett Epstein, Matt Topic,
(29:00):
David Brelow, and Julie Wolf. We want to hear from you.
Email us at info at somebody podcast dot com or
leave us a voicemail at seven seventy three two seven
zero zero one two one. To learn more about this
case and for links to additional materials, go to our
(29:21):
show page at somebody podcast dot com. You can also
find a list of everyone we want to think there
so many people helped us along the way.
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