There were signs for nearly a year that Quintonio LeGrier appeared to be on a downward spiral.
In the months before he was fatally shot by a Chicago police officer after allegedly swinging a bat at him, records show the teen had become so familiar a figure to Northern Illinois University police for his increasingly erratic and bizarre behavior that at least two officers knew him by his first name, according to police reports obtained by the Tribune.
There was a dorm fight in March that left the NIU sophomore with a badly swollen eye. The 19-year-old was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor when he refused to talk to a cop who was questioning him, saying, “I didn’t see nothing, I didn’t do nothing, I don’t know nothing,” the reports show. Then in May, LeGrier alarmed other students when he shouted profanities in the dorm cafeteria and struck a female employee in the chest when she asked for his student ID.
“Do you know who I am?” an officer quoted LeGrier as saying when he tried to arrest him for battery. “I am God.”
One night on campus in September, LeGrier allegedly stared down and chased a female student, who later told police she feared he was going to beat or rape her. Two officers, both of whom shouted to LeGrier by name, drew their guns on him, saying they feared he might be armed after spotting him holding a black object, the reports show. But he had only a cellphone, police said.
As officers awaited medics, police said, LeGrier repeatedly shouted, “I am God!” and “I am in outer space!”
After that encounter, authorities involuntarily admitted LeGrier to a DeKalb hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, records show.
It was evidence of continuing erratic behavior for the teen who, despite a traumatic early childhood, had made strides with the help of a caring foster mother and become an honor student at Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy in Chicago.
Just three months later, LeGrier had a final confrontation — this time with Chicago police during Christmas break when he allegedly brandished a baseball bat at an officer responding to what has been described as a domestic dispute. He and a neighbor — Bettie Jones, a 55-year-old grandmother — were fatally shot. Police said Jones’ death was accidental. The officer told investigators he never saw Jones, a law enforcement source has told the Tribune.
In an interview, LeGrier’s mother, Janet Cooksey, said her son told her on Christmas Day that he wouldn’t return to NIU after the break. Cooksey said she got angry with her only child and took him to stay with his father at his West Side home that same day.
That’s where the deadly confrontation took place early the next morning. His father had called 911 saying he was afraid his son was trying to hurt him.
LeGrier was briefly banned from campus after the September incident and faced possible discipline from NIU, including his ouster from student housing, a university spokesman said. The university required he undergo counseling. It was unclear how long his psychiatric hospitalization lasted.
A review of the police reports and juvenile court records as well as interviews with LeGrier’s friends and family portray an intelligent teen who wanted success but whose behavior drastically changed last year.
“He was depressed. … He was going through something. I did notice a big difference,” Cooksey said. “I asked them to test him for drugs because I noticed myself that he wasn’t the same person.”
Whitney Cain, a 20-year-old sophomore majoring in public health at NIU, said she had been close friends with LeGrier since their freshman year.
“He would be like kind of angry a lot,” she said of the final months of his life. “He wasn’t violent, but he would be a little more angry when things didn’t go his way. He felt like nobody treated him like he thought they should. People would laugh at him, and he lost a lot of friends because of how he was acting, so he felt like nobody was there for him.”
Last fall, LeGrier had sat for an entire hour with his fist raised at a dorm council meeting while wearing a handmade sign taped to his chest that “said something about being a real man,” a dorm adviser told campus police last year, according to a police report. The adviser told police she felt LeGrier’s mental state was deteriorating but saw no signs he posed a danger to himself or others, the report said.
His mother and Cain said LeGrier often said “I’m God” as almost a catchphrase and insisted it wasn’t a sign of mental illness.
His most serious run-in with NIU police came Sept. 2, records show. Police were sent to his Neptune Central dormitory about 9 p.m. for a suspicious-person call after a woman said LeGrier was acting strangely and had damaged a display case. He fist-bumped an officer hard and laughed “unnaturally” when asked questions, officers wrote in a report.
The dorm adviser told officers LeGrier had been acting oddly earlier that week, walking into her room and picking up objects without saying a word, the report said. His bizarre behavior at the dorm council meeting had taken place a day later, she said.
About 30 minutes later, another officer on bike patrol spotted a woman running from LeGrier, screaming “Help me, he’s chasing me!” according to a police report.
The woman told police she had been hanging out in the Neptune Central lobby but decided to leave after LeGrier kept staring at her. He followed her and chased her when she took off running, she told police. LeGrier had almost caught up with her when the bike officer intervened. She told police she had feared he would strangle her with a phone-charging cable hanging from his cell or beat or sexually assault her, according to reports.
The arresting officer wrote that he told LeGrier he was going to detain him and was able to cuff LeGrier’s left wrist before the teen pulled away.
“Don’t do this, Quintonio,” the officer said he told him. He recognized LeGrier from the suspicious-person call that same night.
LeGrier then quickly reached for his waistband with his right hand, leading the officer to push him away and draw his weapon, according to the police report. He went inside the Neptune Central lobby where about 30 students were gathered, and he smiled and continued to ignore commands. Finally, he laid on the floor as he was surrounded by NIU police, at least two with their guns drawn, according to police reports.
His eyes were rolling back in his head, police said, and some 911 callers earlier that night had said LeGrier appeared to be under the influence of drugs.
“No, I’m high off life,” LeGrier allegedly told an NIU officer who asked if he’d taken any drugs.
Juvenile court records paint a troubled early childhood for LeGrier, who was born in 1996 to Cooksey and Antonio LeGrier.
In 2002, at age 5, he was taken by child-protection workers from the home he shared with his mother and grandmother after Cooksey called a social services caseworker, saying “she couldn’t stand it any longer” and “was going to kill her son,” records show.
The boy frantically clutched a doorknob, trying to remain in the home with his mother, according to the records. Cooksey denied to the Tribune that she ever intended to hurt her son and said she threatened to hurt her son in that call only in an effort to get counseling for both of them.
LeGrier flourished after being placed with his foster mom, Mary Strenger, who he called grandma, records show.
Counselors described LeGrier as well-mannered, articulate and sweet and noted that he excelled at school and made many friends. They also said he was “resilient,” particularly in light of going years at a time without seeing his mother, according to the records.
He rebuilt a relationship with his father, the two first hanging out and playing Uno in a therapist’s office, according to records. The relationship grew from meeting monthly at a West Side McDonald’s to Quintonio spending weekends at his father’s house.
The elder LeGrier objected to Strenger’s potential adoption of Quintonio, and the father sought full custody. In 2008, a Cook County family court judge settled on a compromise, making Strenger the boy’s legal guardian until he turned 18 but allowing LeGrier visitation rights.
By fall 2014, Quintonio had enrolled at NIU with plans to study electrical engineering.
“Nobody is really thinking about what he went through with his childhood,” said Cain, his friend at NIU. “He went through a lot, and I feel like nobody understood. He was just misunderstood, and nobody really took the time to get to know him like I did.”
Freelance reporter Clifford Ward contributed.
Twitter @SteveSchmadeke
