Nov. 25 (UPI) -- Cook County prosecutors have charged a Chicago police detective with involuntary manslaughter after he killed an unarmed woman during an off-duty shooting in the city’s Douglas Park neighborhood on March 21, 2012.
Detective Dante Servin, 40, was also charged with reckless discharge of a firearm and reckless conduct.
During the incident, Servin reportedly mistook a cellphone for a gun and fired five shots at a group of people near his home. He was allegedly trying to hit Antonio Cross -- a convicted felon Servin says pointed a gun at him -- but one of the bullets ended up striking and killing 22-year-old Rekia Boyd.
"I feel like he needs to be held responsible for what he did," Boyd's brother Martinez Sutton said after learning of the charges. "He took a life that he had no right to take. I didn't think it would get this far. I had no faith in the system." His lack of faith is understandable. According to reports, there have been 659 people shot by Chicago cops since 1998 and only one of those officers has faced prosecution.
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"Hopefully, it lets cops know and other people with authority (know) that you can't keep abusing the system," Sutton said. "My sister's dead. She's not coming back. That's the hardest thing we have to get over." Servin joined the department in 1994 and has been on administrative duty since the shooting. “My client is going to plead not guilty because he didn’t do anything wrong. He did exactly what he was trained to do,” said Servin’s criminal defense attorney, Thomas Brandstrader.
[Chicago Tribune]
