25-year-old black man shot and killed by off-duty officer
On Saturday afternoon, a 25-year-old Indianapolis man was shot and killed by an off-duty officer while in Chicago for his cousin’s funeral. The shooting happened in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood.
According to police, the officer was fired upon before he fired back, though the victim’s family disputes this claim.
The victim has been identified as Joshua Beal, and he has two children. He was in critical condition when he was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center, where he succumbed to his injuries.
— Family of black man shot 14 times demand police be charged —Â
The incident began when a vehicle leaving funeral services stopped in traffic in front of a fire house. An off-duty firefighter let them know they were illegally blocking the lane, at which point multiple people exited the vehicle.
It was then that a verbal and physical altercation ensued. The officer who fired the fatal shot was at a nearby business and came to assist the firefighter.
A Chicago police sergeant was on his way to work as he drove by and witnessed a man with a gun. When this man “failed to drop his weapon, shots were fired striking the individual multiple times,” according to police. It was the sergeant that fired the fatal shots.
“Chicago police gunned my baby down like a vicious animal,” said Tiffaney Boxley, Joshua Beal’s mother. “They shot him twice in the back and three times in his front.”
The family claims that the altercation went down in a very different way.
They say that an off-duty officer, in an unmarked vehicle, cut off one of the cars in the funeral procession. This led the officer and the occupants of the funeral car to exit their vehicles.
After a verbal exchange, the officer pulled his weapon and fired on Beal. The Beal family says there was no provocation; all Joshua did was let the officer know that he had a concealed weapon permit.
“This is what CPD do. They tear our families apart over and over again. They have no consideration for life,” Boxley stated.
There is a cell phone video taken by a woman driving by the scene that captured the sounds of the gunshots.
“The man didn’t pull a gun,” said the unidentified woman. “The man was on the passenger side of the car.”
