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How the paths of Laquan McDonald and Jason Van Dyke crossed that fateful night

The police-involved killing that would rock Chicago started out with what seemed like a routine burglary.

On a chilly October night four years ago, a 911 caller said he’d spotted a teen breaking into trucks at 41st Street and Kildare Avenue in an industrial area along the Stevenson Expressway. The man said calmly that he was holding the teen until police arrived.

A little over 2 miles away, Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke and his partner were getting coffee at a 7-Eleven when they heard a dispatch report that a suspect had a knife and more units were needed to assist. They got in their marked SUV and sped north on Pulaski Road toward the scene.

Less than four minutes later, 17-year-old Laquan McDonald lay dying in the street, shot 16 times by Van Dyke.

The police dashboard camera video depicting the moments leading up to the Oct. 20, 2014, shooting has been played around the world for nearly three years. The graphic images sparked protests and political upheaval and led to a sprawling federal civil rights probe into the systemic mistreatment of citizens by Chicago police, particularly in the city’s minority communities.

Now, as Van Dyke’s trial on first-degree murder charges is set to get underway Monday with opening statements, the chain of events that brought Van Dyke and McDonald tragically together that night will be scrutinized for the first time in court.

Unlike the clips shown on most news accounts or snippets available on YouTube, the key video from a beat car that trailed Van Dyke’s SUV to the scene will be shown to the jury in its entirety. It will be slowed down, each fraction of a second played over and over, synchronized with police radio dispatches and analyzed by dueling experts.

Since many of the facts are undisputed, how the images are interpreted by the jury will be crucial. To win a conviction on first-degree murder, prosecutors must convince jurors that Van Dyke, the only officer on the scene to fire his weapon, did not have a reasonable fear for his life or the safety of his fellow officers when he emptied his gun on McDonald.

Prosecutors surely will highlight one aspect of the timeline particularly damaging to Van Dyke: That the other officers involved seemed to be operating with restraint, content to let McDonald walk away while they waited for backup cops with a Taser to arrive at the scene.

One officer, in fact, trailed McDonald on foot for about half a mile over several blocks, never threatening to shoot. Van Dyke, however, opened fire just six seconds after stepping out of his squad car with his gun drawn.

Van Dyke’s attorneys likely will contend, though, that the video shows only one viewpoint — and one not from the officer’s perspective. Daniel Herbert, the officer’s lead lawyer, has argued in pretrial hearings that the shooting was a clear-cut case of self-defense and that prosecutors charged Van Dyke with murder only to save face amid the deepening political scandal.

“Yes, it was an ugly shooting, ugly from the standpoint it showed a graphic image … not unlike most shootings where a police officer shoots at an individual,” Herbert said at one hearing. “The point is it was business as usual.”

Shift starts: 9 p.m.

At the time of the shooting, Van Dyke, a 37-year-old married father of two, had been a Chicago police officer for nearly 13 years, working mostly high-crime districts on the city’s South and West sides. Like many cops, he moonlighted as a security guard to make extra cash to supplement his $80,000-a-year salary. Earlier that same day, Van Dyke worked security at the Walmart in Cicero, just a few miles from where the confrontation with McDonald later unfolded, according to his interview with the city’s police oversight agency.

Van Dyke told the investigator that after his shift at the Walmart, he returned to his residence in the Garfield Ridge neighborhood. Later he drove to the Chicago Lawn District station on West 63rd Street to start his 9 p.m. shift as a “relief officer,” a floating position often used to cover the city’s busiest districts. It was his first night back on duty after several days off.

He was partnered with Joseph Walsh, a veteran officer who had worked with Van Dyke just once before. They attended roll call and were assigned a marked Chevrolet Tahoe for the night — unit 845R — before heading out on patrol.

The area patrolled by Van Dyke that night was far from any of McDonald’s known friends or family, so how the teen wound up there isn’t known. McDonald, who was involved in the state child welfare system since the age of 3 and mostly raised by his great-grandmother until her death in August 2013, had been living for several months with an uncle in the Englewood neighborhood on the city’s South Side. The teen’s mother was in the process of regaining custody of him and his younger sister. On the last weekend of his life, McDonald had decided to hang out at his cousin’s home in the Lawndale neighborhood, about 5 miles from the lot where he was spotted breaking into trucks.

Two of McDonald’s close friends told reporters for WBEZ-FM 91.5 that they last saw McDonald the night before the shooting, a Sunday, while hanging out and partying together in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side. McDonald left sometime after midnight to go change his clothes, they said.

About three hours later, a neighbor of McDonald’s aunt called 911 after she encountered him while parking behind her home and he asked to borrow her car.

The neighbor, Yvette Patterson, said in an interview that she had never met the teen and thought it was a strange question. Police arrived and had McDonald apologize to her, then told Patterson they were taking him to Mount Sinai Hospital for observation because he’d admitted he was “high.” It was unknown whether the officers ever transported him there, however, or just let him go.

At the time, McDonald was suspended from Sullivan House High School in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood for insubordination because of an ongoing dispute with a female student, juvenile court records show. A meeting had been scheduled the morning of Oct. 20 at the school to lift the suspension, but a caseworker’s scheduling conflict caused it to be delayed 24 hours. Still, McDonald was in class at some point that day.

The break-in: 9:45 p.m.

At 9:45 p.m. that day, a 43-year-old truck driver and furniture store owner reported to police that he caught a teen breaking into trucks in a lot by United Rentals, a tool and equipment rental business on a block dotted with truck yards and old railroad tracks overgrown with weeds.

“I need a cop over here on 41 and Kildare,” the caller, who was with his wife at the time, said in broken English. “I have parking lot for the trucks, and I have a guy right here that stolen the radios.”

“Are you holding this person?” the police dispatcher asked.

When the man said he was, the dispatcher replied, “OK, we’ll send the police.”

The truck driver is expected to testify at Van Dyke’s trial that after he hung up with police, McDonald pulled out a knife and tried to stab him. In a brief interview with the Tribune recently, the man, who did not wish to be publicly identified for fear of reprisal, said McDonald had a “crazy” look in his eyes and seemed to be in a drug-induced paranoia. He said McDonald didn’t say a word but “just grunted” when he swung the knife in his direction.

“I threw some dirt at him,” the man said. “Then I threw my cellphone, and he ran off.”

Police respond: 9:47 p.m.

Responding police were not aware of those details, however. At 9:47 p.m., Officers Thomas Gaffney and Joseph McElligott, who were on patrol in the area, responded to the call of an attempted burglary and were told by the truck driver that McDonald had fled north on Kildare in a black T-shirt.

The officers spotted McDonald moments later walking east down 40th Street, stepping from the cracked sidewalk onto the street as he neared the hulking warehouse of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, according to a report by the city inspector general’s office. McElligott got out of the squad car and ordered McDonald to stop and show his hands, but the teen instead turned and walked away while holding a 3-inch folding knife in his right hand. Seeing the weapon, McElligott drew his gun and continued to follow McDonald on foot as he walked toward Pulaski.

At 9:53 p.m., McElligott radioed to dispatch that McDonald was armed with a knife. The dispatcher then sent a districtwide message: “Looking for a Taser. Armed offender.”

Two miles to the south, Van Dyke and his partner heard the call for assistance as they were leaving the 7-Eleven parking lot at 59th Street and Pulaski, where they had stopped for coffee at the beginning of their overnight shift, according to Van Dyke’s statement to investigators. As they were driving north with their lights and sirens on, another call came in from Gaffney and McElligott that McDonald had “popped our tire” on their squad vehicle.

“Popped?” the dispatcher asked. “10-4. Anybody close?”

At 9:56 p.m., less than two minutes before McDonald was shot, Van Dyke and his partner radioed in for the first time.

“45 Robert. We’re about two blocks away.”

The shooting: 9:57 p.m.

After popping the squad vehicle tire with his knife, McDonald was nearing the busy commercial intersection of 40th Street and Pulaski when he took off running into the parking lot of a Burger King on the corner.

McDonald ran southeast through the parking lot onto Pulaski, followed by Van Dyke’s car, which turned around and jumped a curb in pursuit. On the radio, officers calling in their positions gave no hint of alarm. No calls for additional backup were made.

“Let me know when he’s in custody, guys,” the dispatcher said at 9:57 p.m.

At the same time, a dashboard camera on another police car arriving at the scene captured McDonald jogging south in the middle of Pulaski, then slowing to a walk. He hiked up his pants, then held his right arm out to his side, the knife visible in his right hand.

As McDonald walked diagonally across the lane divider away from the police, Van Dyke got out of his SUV in the left-turn lane and walked toward the teen with his gun drawn, while Walsh, holding his gun as well, exited the driver’s side and started moving around the vehicle.

McDonald looked to his right, moved his hand behind his waist and then back to his right side. As he crossed the lane markers, he looked briefly to his left toward Van Dyke and stepped in a slightly more southbound direction, allegedly ignoring the officers’ commands to drop the knife.

With McDonald about 10 feet away, Van Dyke took a step forward and fired — at precisely 9:57 p.m. and 36 seconds, according to the dashcam. McDonald spun and fell to the street, lying motionless on his side. Van Dyke took another step forward and fired again. Over the next 13 seconds, he unloaded all 16 rounds from his gun, striking McDonald in the head, chest, back and both arms and legs, records show.

McDonald could be seen making small movements as he was hit with shot after shot, puffs of smoke or debris rising from around his body.

According to prosecutors, Van Dyke was in the process of reloading when Walsh yelled to hold his fire.

‘Everything’s fine’: 9:58 p.m.

At 9:58 p.m., Walsh approached McDonald and kicked the knife away from his motionless body. A dispatcher asked if everyone was OK.

“10-4. Everything’s fine,” an officer responded. “Roll an ambulance over here.”

Less than a minute later, two Cook County sheriff’s police officers who had followed the Chicago police cars to the scene approached McDonald in the street to see if they could render first aid. According to their testimony to the city inspector general’s office, the other Chicago police officers were standing around talking to each other while McDonald lay gasping for breath.

“I see there’s blood all over the pavement,” testified one of the sheriff’s officers, Adam Murphy. “He was kind of gurgling when he was (lying) there. I remember his mouth going open and closed like he was trying to gasp for air. And I looked for everybody else, and they were kind of standing there.”

After McDonald appeared to have stopped breathing, Murphy saw Van Dyke pacing back and forth in front of his squad car. He approached Van Dyke and told him to sit down and drink some water, according to the inspector general’s report.

As Murphy was speaking, several officers approached Van Dyke with a different message, according to his testimony.

“Call your union rep, call your union rep,” they said.

Chicago Tribune’s Christy Gutowski contributed.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @jmetr22b

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