Lori Lightfoot and Kim Foxx receive death threats, Chicago man now faces hate crime charges
Christopher J. Tatlock allegedly emailed Foxx his intent to “shoot and hang” her and sent a similar message to Lightfoot.
Hate crime charges have been filed against a Chicago man who allegedly emailed a death threat to Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx earlier this month, the state attorney general’s office said Thursday.
As reported by the Chicago Tribune, Christopher J. Tatlock on May 4 is alleged to have emailed the high-ranking city officials threatening gun violence and lynching, including stating intent to “shoot and hang” Foxx “if she did not prosecute crime in Chicago,” per a news release from Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office.
A similar email Tatlock sent to Lightfoot was also found by investigators, according to the outlet.
Tatlock now faces charges including two counts of threatening a public official and two counts of a hate crime, which could lead to a possible 16-year prison sentence, per the Tribune.
Tatlock is scheduled to appear at the Skokie Courthouse in Cook County on May 20. He is on house arrest pending trial and must forfeit any guns he possesses. He also may not use email, or contact Lightfoot, Foxx, or their families in any way, according to the outlet.
“There is no room in our society for hate and violence, and we must condemn such actions in the strongest terms possible,” Raoul stated in the release, per the Tribune. “My office will work to hold accountable anyone who threatens the physical safety of any resident of our state — regardless of the position they hold.”
Lightfoot became the 56th mayor of Chicago in May 2019 and is the first Black woman and openly gay politician to hold that office. Her administration has been under stress due to a recent spike in violence and COVID-19 restrictions, theGrio previously reported.
This is not the mayor’s first brush with a potentially dangerous individual this year — as previously reported, in February, Cook County prosecutors charged a man with stalking her and firing a weapon near her home.
Joseph Igartua was charged with three felony counts of stalking, plus earned another for reckless discharge of a firearm, according to the Cook County state attorney’s office. During a bond hearing, Judge Maryam Ahmad ordered him to stay away from Lightfoot and to surrender all his guns, and held him without bond, as reported by Fox 32.
Lightfoot released a statement decrying what happened and hoped the incident could be one that the public could learn from. “We simply cannot lose sight of our individual and collective humanity. We need to model the behavior that we want our children to copy,” the statement read in part.
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