April 28, 2020 • 26 mins
On the second anniversary of Courtney’s death, Shapearl holds a middle-of-the-night protest in front of the police station. She drives the exact route that Courtney took the night he was killed, and runs into the supervising officer from that night. Two witnesses show up at the protest to tell Shapearl what they know.
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. For more information, go to somebodypodcast.com.
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.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What You're about to Hear is a work of investigative
journalism that explores one woman's search for answers in her
son's death. The views and opinions in this podcast do
not reflect those of I Heart Media. Previously on Somebody,
did the people you work with now that you guys
were romantically involved. No, A lot of people were very
(00:22):
very that weren't. He lived in a really rough neighborhood.
We heard two gunshots and a car drive off. You
want to know what you are Did you see anybody running?
How many shots? None of that stuff was asked, Like
down the street from where I live, this guy like
he's you know, he's a game member. He has really
long hair, like down't pass his waist. They had said
(00:45):
there was some Hispanic guys running around in that neighborhood,
and so they had claimed as a possibility that maybe
they had confused them for somebody else. So I had
to follow that leaders wrong. I believe that somebody knows something,
somebody saw something, and it just takes a lot of
courage from somebody to tell what they saw. My name
(01:06):
is Chaparral Wells. This is the story of my son, Courtney,
a young black man in a fancy car who wound
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, somebody every day.
(01:33):
Don't bide the snugging. That's right, h Y. We buried
(02:03):
Courtney at the cemetery called Burt Oak. We have a
family plot there. As you can see, these are some
of the graves. Burt Oak was originally the only cemetery
where black people could be buried in Illinois. It's also
(02:23):
the cemetery where Emmett Till is buried. It's where my
grandma is buried too, And this is where Bren and
I buried. Are two angel babies, a set of twins
in Every time I come here, it's in disrepair. The
(02:45):
ground itself is crumbling and there's weeds everywhere. The grass
is high, there's trash. You can't be sad because you
you saw dogs, angry because the way it looks. I've
had it out a few times with the groundskeepers. You
didn't even have this much gred when we came here
(03:05):
last time. Sometimes we have to redo it a being
as d They're nice guys, but I have to keep
it real with them about the conditions of the cemetery.
It's horrible. Look at this, Look at that, look looking
looking I'm sorry that no, no, no, you probably know
(03:26):
by now. I'm not afraid of confrontation, because nobody should
have to go here and look and be embarrassed. When
you come and to a great site to breath, it's
already a difficult situation. Look at today, you want to
chop my head on the line. You're gonna be hugging me.
I'm sorry, but y'all know, y'all got me a little heated.
(03:47):
I'm a little heated when it comes to my baby,
I get a little heated. Is personal. It had almost
been two years since Courtney died. Two years I found
(04:08):
out there was a deadline, a statue of limitations for
me to sue the city for how they treated my son.
So I got some new lawyers to take the case
to court. They argued that police caused delays by taking
Courtney into custody and handcuffing him, and that they conspired
with the fire department to prepare misleading reports to cover
(04:31):
up their actions. I wanted justice, and I wanted those
officers on the record. I wanted them to be forced
to testify, and I wanted the city to see that
treating a young black man as a criminal instead of
a victim has consequences. There was one other thing that
(04:54):
I needed to do on his second anniversary. I was
going to hold a protest outside the police station. We
were gonna go there and light candles with Courtney's friends
and our whole family. It's good do a short Facebook.
(05:21):
It's kind of a difficult moment for me right now.
I tried to do this last year, but I just
wasn't strong enough to do it. But I feel that
his spirit would be there and so that he would
know that he's not alone right now. And I hope
that you can come out and just light a candle
for him. God bless. I was going to do all
(05:46):
of this in the middle of the night, at the
exact same time as Courtney pulled up to the station
and called trying to get help. I was gonna drive
the BMW that Courtney drove from my house and Cistero
to Belmont Craigan, just like Courtney did. I was gonna
drive down Alma Street, cut through the alley, pull up
(06:11):
by the corner of the church just like Courtney did.
It was like for me, I couldn't be there when
it happened. I always felt like some type of guilt
for not being there. So for me, I had to
take that journey with him so that that way he
knows that his mom was there. Leading up to the anniversary,
(06:42):
Courtney's friends started posting old videos and tributes, and so
my timeline was flooded with memories of Courtney. There were
tons of photos of Courtney in his car Baybay every day.
Million dollars, a million dollars. Oh my god, Babay, I
(07:06):
think that I want to say that she's my fourth child,
even though she's a vehicle. Over the last two years,
Baby had been through a lot. My mom had an
accident in Baby. How did it get in an accident?
She was trying to change lanes and so when she
changed lanes, she didn't see the other car and so
(07:27):
they ran right into the car. And when she told
me that she crashed the car, I hung up on her.
I didn't ask her what she okay, because I figured
she's okay because she calling me, But I just I
couldn't talk. I didn't leave the bed for three days
as much as I want to let it go, I can't.
(07:49):
It was like they stay. Fund was like, well, we're
gonna sell awful parts, and part of me I felt
like they're just like taking my son and just selling
my awful parts. I was like, no, I need the
call back. So I had found two mechanics, one to
do the interior work and then one to do the
(08:11):
body work of the vehicle. And it was a lot
of money to get her restored. But once she was
as good as new, I got a new license plate
for Babe court thirty four. Now we were ready to
take this drive. While Chaprole was getting ready for the
(08:34):
second anniversary of Courtney's death, we were busy reporting. Turns
out Courtney wasn't the only one to call one after
he'd been shot March four, three minutes and three seconds.
Someone else called nine one one that night to a
neighbor who reported hearing shots fired. Police interviewed her about
(08:57):
a month after Courtney died, to watch the hell, yeah,
I'm coming to us, but you know there were there
was a shooting right here, long long How many shots
to here? Ma'am? Like the neighbor's name was Elena. She
made that nine one one call about six minutes after
Courtney's nine one one call saying he'd been shot. Okay,
(09:20):
anybody seeing who was doing the shooting? No, but right now,
I was coming to with my bad room. When I
was took get on mama house. She said she heard
two shots and I was parking with the carcass I
real best, but we're not really earty. There was like
two rasted. Okay, so you heard two shots fired on
the block? Yeah, okay, I'll send someone over to check
(09:42):
it out. Okay, thanks, you're welcome. Chapar wanted to talk
to her, but her name and number were redacted from
the police report, so none of us knew who she was.
But a few months later, when we got the nine
one one call from the city, we found her number.
It was very in the metadata that came with the
call recording, so we got in touch. At the time
(10:11):
Courtney was shot, Elena lived in the neighborhood, but she
moved out because of the violence. These days, Elena and
her family live in a garden apartment on the west
side of the city, a couple of miles from Belmont Craigan.
She and her husband, Edgar, have two kids, an eight
year old girl who loves to jump into adult conversations
and giggle and a little baby boy look big guy.
Just it's like she's a good big sister. She seems
(10:36):
like she's the boss, though she's just a Moline. We
asked her about March four. Here's what she remembers. Elena
was parking a block from the church where Courtney would
park when she heard the two shots. She was helping
her daughter out of the car. I heard that should
(10:57):
a graph her and I put him inside until a
car again. She called her husband, Edgar, on the phone,
to come out and wait for her in their alley.
That's when she saw Courtney's car speed past her and
turned towards the police station. Were you scared at any point? Oh? Yeah,
that was because that was with my better she was.
She was trying. Has that ever happened before? No? Not.
(11:19):
After the shots, she froze, but when she heard a
police siren, she decided it was safe enough to leave. Yeah.
Elena and her daughter walked towards home, where Edgar was
waiting for them. She saw a car speeding down the alley.
Edgar saw it too, He was closer and had a
better view the window was down. Some guys inside she
(11:42):
described them as gangsters, had his hands and said that
jacket and he was the car stopped. The guys inside
stared at Edgar. He had his hands in his pockets
and he didn't want to move them because he was
worried the guys might think it was a gun. His
hands in his pocket, okay, and so the guys thought
(12:04):
that maybe he had something. So I remember the car.
He knows that car it was. But Elena told police
she thought she saw a camera. When we spoke to her,
she said she doesn't really know cars, but that her husband, Edgar,
remembers the make and model. Seemed like Edgar was the
witness we really needed to talk to. Do you think
(12:24):
your husband might remember what the men looked like? Even
though Edgar might have been able to identify these guys,
police never even tried to speak with him. How long
did they stay with it. It's funny minutes and they
didn't talk to Edgar, okay, And they never talked to him.
When we told Elena we were working with Courtney's mom,
(12:47):
she wanted to know more and actually she's going to
be out there in front of the police station on
Saturday at the same time. We told her about the vigil.
We'll try to see if Coogle right here, I'm bren. Yeah,
I'm gonna try to see if so. Psycho tu what
(13:11):
I saw and everything she would think she's it was
the keys to BMW. On March four, Bill and I
met Chapel at her house. It was around midnight. She
was wearing a red Justice for Courtney Copeland t shirt,
getting ready, serving coffee. Her family was starting to congregate.
(13:34):
Jas mc grab the other baby. I think Brett already
got one in the car and Jasmine tep. Brent lock up, Okay,
lock up. Brent and their teenage daughters, Kaylin Jasmine were
bundling up two little babies, faith in Sahara. Chapelle had
started fostering them in the fall. Now they were six
(13:54):
months old. Shapell was getting their bottles ready. You got
her past by stay ye va benefits for those who
qualifying can today at seven or eight six eight. I
(14:16):
don't know nothing about this class. What about it? There
it is? Chappelle and Bill took off together. I followed
behind you said you feel like you have to do this?
Why I put yourself through it? Because I feel like
I've been hiding from it. O Courtney comes and he
(14:44):
does that final snapchat in front of our house, and
then I guess that's what he was talking to him,
and he decided to go over there. And it's like,
what if you had it just went to bed, you know,
(15:09):
And it's just like that one second, one second changed
his whole life. It was a pretty short drive that
time of night. It only took about fifteen twenty minutes.
This is almost black, so this is the exact way
(15:32):
that he would come. We went through the alley to
where Courtney would park, just up by the church chapel.
Stopped the car. This is where we believe Courtney was shot.
So they when they found glass. They found glass by
(15:54):
the fire hydrant, which is a little bit ways. I
drove over to the police station, pulled up in that
left turn lane. I stopped the car right in the
middle of the street, just as Courtney had done two
years earlier after getting shot. Across from the police station,
(16:19):
friends and family had started gathering, lighting candles, setting up
picture frames. It was cold, you could see your broth.
I didn't get out of the car for several minutes.
I just needed to sit there and think about my
(16:40):
son about what he must have been feeling there on
the ground. I was just trying to put myself in
his position and what he would have said to police.
In that moment, police came out from the station. They
(17:01):
started to surround me. They asked me to move out
the road, and I just simply lost it. I'm not
moving Leave me long. I am not moving it. No, no,
I am not moving it. I'm staring right here. Leave
me a long, Please leave me long. Now, you did
(17:37):
what did my sons say? What did he say? What
else did he say? Y'all were talking to Hilp. Me'all
was talking to him. He was talking to y'all, lor
to Cavra. What did you say? What did he say?
He was shot? The ambulance came here and started taking
This is when I realized who I was talking to.
(17:58):
Sergeant Ronan. You was on the I got it when
you was, when I got the report, when you came
on the scene. He was on the same before them,
And that's got y'all was around him, y'all around. He
was the supervisor the night Courtney died. He was there
that night. He was right there in that very spot.
(18:20):
My family was holding me up, and I just wanted
Sergeant Ronan to see my pain, to see that my
son's life mattered to somebody, y'all to helping me, y'all
to do nothing, because you imagine a mama seeing that
my son begging for help. What happened. That's what happened
(18:42):
to my baby. That's what happened to my child. That's
what happens. My son is on the ground. Remember, this
is the guy. We looked into, scores of complaints against him,
like false arrest, planting evidence, using racist you're trying to
help me, that's what I'm saying. I did that, my uncamp,
(19:12):
she asks Ronan, who handcuffed Courtney. I don't know who
we would put up that. I don't Again, unfortunately, this
is two years ago. I mean, I wish I had
better for you. But as far as we did this
to your son, that's the detectives that follow up on that.
(19:34):
So nobody working on it. Nobody's working out, and nobody
can he did another black. Nobody cares you gotta do
anything yet, I don't know he has met the black killers.
Let me know if you don't came the y'all me,
my son come up to y'all s he's not, and
(19:56):
then here haircuffs. Has that possible again, ma'am, I don't know.
I don't know what happened before I got that trying
to help him, That's what I saw. It went on
and on like this for several minutes, right in the
middle of the street. And then a white shirt another
(20:20):
officer pulled Ronan away from the scene, and Ronan he
just left. He told all the other officers to leave
as well. Things calmed down in our protests and the vigil.
It went on, and then out of the corner of
(20:45):
my eye, I saw Elena, the woman who called nine
one one. She showed up. She was standing with her
family at the edge of the park, across from the
police station. You feeling, they called very calls your kids
out here. She's with her two kids and Edgar, her husband.
Everyone was shivering. We ran and got Chapral. We wanted
(21:08):
to make sure they had the chance to meet Why.
I'm just sorry you why the two investigation, you know,
because then nobody else going to help us, so we
had to try to fight this ourselves. To know what happened.
(21:30):
When I saw Elena, I hugged her immediately. I was
surprised she even showed up for a mother she never
even met. It was like, Okay, this is somebody that
has given me some information. She feels my pain, and
she's connecting me on a mother to mother level. I
(21:52):
appreciate you coming out because it means a lot to
a chance to talk to you. But yeah, they would
never talk to me. Before I went back to the vigil,
we hugged each other again, Thank you so much. Bill
(22:15):
and I stayed with Elene and Edgar to talk. We
needed to know what Edgar could remember seeing that night?
Would your month? Would you mund chance sitting for me
if you tell us what you saw the night? So
he put on his jacket and he tried to go
(22:36):
down to he could he go down? He saw that
there was a car coming through the alley. Profest. He
didn't stop. And here's what Edgar remembered. When he got
to the alley, he saw a car coming fast, so
fast he was afraid it was going to hit Elene
and their daughter as they tried to cross. You write
down the license, you you knew he already knew that
(22:59):
first to receive forty six, Yeah, it was it. What
kind of car was it? There, what color a Mercury
Grand Marquis with three guys inside? Did the police ever
(23:21):
talk to you? Um? No, he never talked to police,
never talked to Edgar, even though Elina told them he
saw everything. The police knew then your husband something when
I when when they went to see me right here? Um?
I told him that he saw we do No, No,
(23:43):
they didn't sences him. The alley was narrow, just a
few feet between Edgar and the driver, and the car
window was rolled down. They were pretty much face to face.
And what do they look like? Them? And Edgar remembered
(24:04):
something else? Do you remember their hair? The better they
use more hair? Not here h one of the guys
in the car had long hair. Every Body so bide
(24:32):
every day, No bode 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
(24:54):
chaparrole Wells. This podcast is produced by Alison Flowers and
Bill he Lee. Sarah Guye is our story editor. Ellen
Glover is our associate producer for The Invisible Institute. Jamie
Calvin is Executive producer for Topic Studios. Maria Zuckerman, Christie
Gressman and Letyle Mallard are executive producers. Special thanks to
(25:18):
Lizzie Jacobs for the intercept. Roger Hodge, Deputy Editor, is
supervising producer. 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.
(25:41):
Additional reporting by Sam Stecklow, Annie When, Cahari Blackburn, Rajef Sinclair,
Henry Adams, Matilda Voyat, Dana rosos kellerher Frances McDonald, Diana Archmagian,
Maddie Anderson, Andrew Fan and Risa upon Cool. Translation support
(26:02):
by Benny hernandez A Compo and Emma for As. Fact
checking by nol Our Jenny Special thanks to Chris Rasmussen,
Bennett Epstein, Matt Topic, 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
(26:24):
seven seven three to seven zero zero one two one.
To learn more about this case and for links to
additional materials, go to our show page at somebody podcast
dot com. You can also find a list of everyone
we want to thank. There so many people helped us
along the way.
What You're about to Hear is a work of investigative
journalism that explores one woman's search for answers in her
son's death. The views and opinions in this podcast do
not reflect those of I Heart Media. Previously on Somebody,
did the people you work with now that you guys
were romantically involved. No, A lot of people were very
(00:22):
very that weren't. He lived in a really rough neighborhood.
We heard two gunshots and a car drive off. You
want to know what you are Did you see anybody running?
How many shots? None of that stuff was asked, Like
down the street from where I live, this guy like
he's you know, he's a game member. He has really
long hair, like down't pass his waist. They had said
(00:45):
there was some Hispanic guys running around in that neighborhood,
and so they had claimed as a possibility that maybe
they had confused them for somebody else. So I had
to follow that leaders wrong. I believe that somebody knows something,
somebody saw something, and it just takes a lot of
courage from somebody to tell what they saw. My name
(01:06):
is Chaparral Wells. This is the story of my son, Courtney,
a young black man in a fancy car who wound
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, somebody every day.
(01:33):
Don't bide the snugging. That's right, h Y. We buried
(02:03):
Courtney at the cemetery called Burt Oak. We have a
family plot there. As you can see, these are some
of the graves. Burt Oak was originally the only cemetery
where black people could be buried in Illinois. It's also
(02:23):
the cemetery where Emmett Till is buried. It's where my
grandma is buried too, And this is where Bren and
I buried. Are two angel babies, a set of twins
in Every time I come here, it's in disrepair. The
(02:45):
ground itself is crumbling and there's weeds everywhere. The grass
is high, there's trash. You can't be sad because you
you saw dogs, angry because the way it looks. I've
had it out a few times with the groundskeepers. You
didn't even have this much gred when we came here
(03:05):
last time. Sometimes we have to redo it a being
as d They're nice guys, but I have to keep
it real with them about the conditions of the cemetery.
It's horrible. Look at this, Look at that, look looking
looking I'm sorry that no, no, no, you probably know
(03:26):
by now. I'm not afraid of confrontation, because nobody should
have to go here and look and be embarrassed. When
you come and to a great site to breath, it's
already a difficult situation. Look at today, you want to
chop my head on the line. You're gonna be hugging me.
I'm sorry, but y'all know, y'all got me a little heated.
(03:47):
I'm a little heated when it comes to my baby,
I get a little heated. Is personal. It had almost
been two years since Courtney died. Two years I found
(04:08):
out there was a deadline, a statue of limitations for
me to sue the city for how they treated my son.
So I got some new lawyers to take the case
to court. They argued that police caused delays by taking
Courtney into custody and handcuffing him, and that they conspired
with the fire department to prepare misleading reports to cover
(04:31):
up their actions. I wanted justice, and I wanted those
officers on the record. I wanted them to be forced
to testify, and I wanted the city to see that
treating a young black man as a criminal instead of
a victim has consequences. There was one other thing that
(04:54):
I needed to do on his second anniversary. I was
going to hold a protest outside the police station. We
were gonna go there and light candles with Courtney's friends
and our whole family. It's good do a short Facebook.
(05:21):
It's kind of a difficult moment for me right now.
I tried to do this last year, but I just
wasn't strong enough to do it. But I feel that
his spirit would be there and so that he would
know that he's not alone right now. And I hope
that you can come out and just light a candle
for him. God bless. I was going to do all
(05:46):
of this in the middle of the night, at the
exact same time as Courtney pulled up to the station
and called trying to get help. I was gonna drive
the BMW that Courtney drove from my house and Cistero
to Belmont Craigan, just like Courtney did. I was gonna
drive down Alma Street, cut through the alley, pull up
(06:11):
by the corner of the church just like Courtney did.
It was like for me, I couldn't be there when
it happened. I always felt like some type of guilt
for not being there. So for me, I had to
take that journey with him so that that way he
knows that his mom was there. Leading up to the anniversary,
(06:42):
Courtney's friends started posting old videos and tributes, and so
my timeline was flooded with memories of Courtney. There were
tons of photos of Courtney in his car Baybay every day.
Million dollars, a million dollars. Oh my god, Babay, I
(07:06):
think that I want to say that she's my fourth child,
even though she's a vehicle. Over the last two years,
Baby had been through a lot. My mom had an
accident in Baby. How did it get in an accident?
She was trying to change lanes and so when she
changed lanes, she didn't see the other car and so
(07:27):
they ran right into the car. And when she told
me that she crashed the car, I hung up on her.
I didn't ask her what she okay, because I figured
she's okay because she calling me, But I just I
couldn't talk. I didn't leave the bed for three days
as much as I want to let it go, I can't.
(07:49):
It was like they stay. Fund was like, well, we're
gonna sell awful parts, and part of me I felt
like they're just like taking my son and just selling
my awful parts. I was like, no, I need the
call back. So I had found two mechanics, one to
do the interior work and then one to do the
(08:11):
body work of the vehicle. And it was a lot
of money to get her restored. But once she was
as good as new, I got a new license plate
for Babe court thirty four. Now we were ready to
take this drive. While Chaprole was getting ready for the
(08:34):
second anniversary of Courtney's death, we were busy reporting. Turns
out Courtney wasn't the only one to call one after
he'd been shot March four, three minutes and three seconds.
Someone else called nine one one that night to a
neighbor who reported hearing shots fired. Police interviewed her about
(08:57):
a month after Courtney died, to watch the hell, yeah,
I'm coming to us, but you know there were there
was a shooting right here, long long How many shots
to here? Ma'am? Like the neighbor's name was Elena. She
made that nine one one call about six minutes after
Courtney's nine one one call saying he'd been shot. Okay,
(09:20):
anybody seeing who was doing the shooting? No, but right now,
I was coming to with my bad room. When I
was took get on mama house. She said she heard
two shots and I was parking with the carcass I
real best, but we're not really earty. There was like
two rasted. Okay, so you heard two shots fired on
the block? Yeah, okay, I'll send someone over to check
(09:42):
it out. Okay, thanks, you're welcome. Chapar wanted to talk
to her, but her name and number were redacted from
the police report, so none of us knew who she was.
But a few months later, when we got the nine
one one call from the city, we found her number.
It was very in the metadata that came with the
call recording, so we got in touch. At the time
(10:11):
Courtney was shot, Elena lived in the neighborhood, but she
moved out because of the violence. These days, Elena and
her family live in a garden apartment on the west
side of the city, a couple of miles from Belmont Craigan.
She and her husband, Edgar, have two kids, an eight
year old girl who loves to jump into adult conversations
and giggle and a little baby boy look big guy.
Just it's like she's a good big sister. She seems
(10:36):
like she's the boss, though she's just a Moline. We
asked her about March four. Here's what she remembers. Elena
was parking a block from the church where Courtney would
park when she heard the two shots. She was helping
her daughter out of the car. I heard that should
(10:57):
a graph her and I put him inside until a
car again. She called her husband, Edgar, on the phone,
to come out and wait for her in their alley.
That's when she saw Courtney's car speed past her and
turned towards the police station. Were you scared at any point? Oh? Yeah,
that was because that was with my better she was.
She was trying. Has that ever happened before? No? Not.
(11:19):
After the shots, she froze, but when she heard a
police siren, she decided it was safe enough to leave. Yeah.
Elena and her daughter walked towards home, where Edgar was
waiting for them. She saw a car speeding down the alley.
Edgar saw it too, He was closer and had a
better view the window was down. Some guys inside she
(11:42):
described them as gangsters, had his hands and said that
jacket and he was the car stopped. The guys inside
stared at Edgar. He had his hands in his pockets
and he didn't want to move them because he was
worried the guys might think it was a gun. His
hands in his pocket, okay, and so the guys thought
(12:04):
that maybe he had something. So I remember the car.
He knows that car it was. But Elena told police
she thought she saw a camera. When we spoke to her,
she said she doesn't really know cars, but that her husband, Edgar,
remembers the make and model. Seemed like Edgar was the
witness we really needed to talk to. Do you think
(12:24):
your husband might remember what the men looked like? Even
though Edgar might have been able to identify these guys,
police never even tried to speak with him. How long
did they stay with it. It's funny minutes and they
didn't talk to Edgar, okay, And they never talked to him.
When we told Elena we were working with Courtney's mom,
(12:47):
she wanted to know more and actually she's going to
be out there in front of the police station on
Saturday at the same time. We told her about the vigil.
We'll try to see if Coogle right here, I'm bren. Yeah,
I'm gonna try to see if so. Psycho tu what
(13:11):
I saw and everything she would think she's it was
the keys to BMW. On March four, Bill and I
met Chapel at her house. It was around midnight. She
was wearing a red Justice for Courtney Copeland t shirt,
getting ready, serving coffee. Her family was starting to congregate.
(13:34):
Jas mc grab the other baby. I think Brett already
got one in the car and Jasmine tep. Brent lock up, Okay,
lock up. Brent and their teenage daughters, Kaylin Jasmine were
bundling up two little babies, faith in Sahara. Chapelle had
started fostering them in the fall. Now they were six
(13:54):
months old. Shapell was getting their bottles ready. You got
her past by stay ye va benefits for those who
qualifying can today at seven or eight six eight. I
(14:16):
don't know nothing about this class. What about it? There
it is? Chappelle and Bill took off together. I followed
behind you said you feel like you have to do this?
Why I put yourself through it? Because I feel like
I've been hiding from it. O Courtney comes and he
(14:44):
does that final snapchat in front of our house, and
then I guess that's what he was talking to him,
and he decided to go over there. And it's like,
what if you had it just went to bed, you know,
(15:09):
And it's just like that one second, one second changed
his whole life. It was a pretty short drive that
time of night. It only took about fifteen twenty minutes.
This is almost black, so this is the exact way
(15:32):
that he would come. We went through the alley to
where Courtney would park, just up by the church chapel.
Stopped the car. This is where we believe Courtney was shot.
So they when they found glass. They found glass by
(15:54):
the fire hydrant, which is a little bit ways. I
drove over to the police station, pulled up in that
left turn lane. I stopped the car right in the
middle of the street, just as Courtney had done two
years earlier after getting shot. Across from the police station,
(16:19):
friends and family had started gathering, lighting candles, setting up
picture frames. It was cold, you could see your broth.
I didn't get out of the car for several minutes.
I just needed to sit there and think about my
(16:40):
son about what he must have been feeling there on
the ground. I was just trying to put myself in
his position and what he would have said to police.
In that moment, police came out from the station. They
(17:01):
started to surround me. They asked me to move out
the road, and I just simply lost it. I'm not
moving Leave me long. I am not moving it. No, no,
I am not moving it. I'm staring right here. Leave
me a long, Please leave me long. Now, you did
(17:37):
what did my sons say? What did he say? What
else did he say? Y'all were talking to Hilp. Me'all
was talking to him. He was talking to y'all, lor
to Cavra. What did you say? What did he say?
He was shot? The ambulance came here and started taking
This is when I realized who I was talking to.
(17:58):
Sergeant Ronan. You was on the I got it when
you was, when I got the report, when you came
on the scene. He was on the same before them,
And that's got y'all was around him, y'all around. He
was the supervisor the night Courtney died. He was there
that night. He was right there in that very spot.
(18:20):
My family was holding me up, and I just wanted
Sergeant Ronan to see my pain, to see that my
son's life mattered to somebody, y'all to helping me, y'all
to do nothing, because you imagine a mama seeing that
my son begging for help. What happened. That's what happened
(18:42):
to my baby. That's what happened to my child. That's
what happens. My son is on the ground. Remember, this
is the guy. We looked into, scores of complaints against him,
like false arrest, planting evidence, using racist you're trying to
help me, that's what I'm saying. I did that, my uncamp,
(19:12):
she asks Ronan, who handcuffed Courtney. I don't know who
we would put up that. I don't Again, unfortunately, this
is two years ago. I mean, I wish I had
better for you. But as far as we did this
to your son, that's the detectives that follow up on that.
(19:34):
So nobody working on it. Nobody's working out, and nobody
can he did another black. Nobody cares you gotta do
anything yet, I don't know he has met the black killers.
Let me know if you don't came the y'all me,
my son come up to y'all s he's not, and
(19:56):
then here haircuffs. Has that possible again, ma'am, I don't know.
I don't know what happened before I got that trying
to help him, That's what I saw. It went on
and on like this for several minutes, right in the
middle of the street. And then a white shirt another
(20:20):
officer pulled Ronan away from the scene, and Ronan he
just left. He told all the other officers to leave
as well. Things calmed down in our protests and the vigil.
It went on, and then out of the corner of
(20:45):
my eye, I saw Elena, the woman who called nine
one one. She showed up. She was standing with her
family at the edge of the park, across from the
police station. You feeling, they called very calls your kids
out here. She's with her two kids and Edgar, her husband.
Everyone was shivering. We ran and got Chapral. We wanted
(21:08):
to make sure they had the chance to meet Why.
I'm just sorry you why the two investigation, you know,
because then nobody else going to help us, so we
had to try to fight this ourselves. To know what happened.
(21:30):
When I saw Elena, I hugged her immediately. I was
surprised she even showed up for a mother she never
even met. It was like, Okay, this is somebody that
has given me some information. She feels my pain, and
she's connecting me on a mother to mother level. I
(21:52):
appreciate you coming out because it means a lot to
a chance to talk to you. But yeah, they would
never talk to me. Before I went back to the vigil,
we hugged each other again, Thank you so much. Bill
(22:15):
and I stayed with Elene and Edgar to talk. We
needed to know what Edgar could remember seeing that night?
Would your month? Would you mund chance sitting for me
if you tell us what you saw the night? So
he put on his jacket and he tried to go
(22:36):
down to he could he go down? He saw that
there was a car coming through the alley. Profest. He
didn't stop. And here's what Edgar remembered. When he got
to the alley, he saw a car coming fast, so
fast he was afraid it was going to hit Elene
and their daughter as they tried to cross. You write
down the license, you you knew he already knew that
(22:59):
first to receive forty six, Yeah, it was it. What
kind of car was it? There, what color a Mercury
Grand Marquis with three guys inside? Did the police ever
(23:21):
talk to you? Um? No, he never talked to police,
never talked to Edgar, even though Elina told them he
saw everything. The police knew then your husband something when
I when when they went to see me right here? Um?
I told him that he saw we do No, No,
(23:43):
they didn't sences him. The alley was narrow, just a
few feet between Edgar and the driver, and the car
window was rolled down. They were pretty much face to face.
And what do they look like? Them? And Edgar remembered
(24:04):
something else? Do you remember their hair? The better they
use more hair? Not here h one of the guys
in the car had long hair. Every Body so bide
(24:32):
every day, No bode 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
(24:54):
chaparrole Wells. This podcast is produced by Alison Flowers and
Bill he Lee. Sarah Guye is our story editor. Ellen
Glover is our associate producer for The Invisible Institute. Jamie
Calvin is Executive producer for Topic Studios. Maria Zuckerman, Christie
Gressman and Letyle Mallard are executive producers. Special thanks to
(25:18):
Lizzie Jacobs for the intercept. Roger Hodge, Deputy Editor, is
supervising producer. 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.
(25:41):
Additional reporting by Sam Stecklow, Annie When, Cahari Blackburn, Rajef Sinclair,
Henry Adams, Matilda Voyat, Dana rosos kellerher Frances McDonald, Diana Archmagian,
Maddie Anderson, Andrew Fan and Risa upon Cool. Translation support
(26:02):
by Benny hernandez A Compo and Emma for As. Fact
checking by nol Our Jenny Special thanks to Chris Rasmussen,
Bennett Epstein, Matt Topic, 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
(26:24):
seven seven three to seven zero zero one two one.
To learn more about this case and for links to
additional materials, go to our show page at somebody podcast
dot com. You can also find a list of everyone
we want to thank. There so many people helped us
along the way.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!