Illinois
City to pay $15M over woman’s death in police chase crash
CHICAGO (AP) — The Chicago City Council approved a settlement on Wednesday that will pay $15 million to the family of a woman who was killed when a police cruiser ran a red light and slammed into her SUV after officers allegedly ignored repeated orders to end their high-speed pursuit of a carjacking suspect.
Without discussion, the council approved the settlement with the family of Guadalupe Francisco-Martinez, a mother of six who was 37 years old when she died. The move was widely expected after its finance committee agreed with the city’s law department that the wrongful death lawsuit should be settled rather than allow it to go to trial and risk having to pay an even greater amount.
If the case had gone to trial, a jury would have been presented evidence outlined in the lawsuit, including a number of radio dispatches in which the pursuing officers were ordered to end their chase before the crash. Further, the lawsuit contended that the officer who struck Francisco-Martinez’s vehicle was driving well over the speed limit and disregarded a red traffic light at the intersection where the collision occurred.
The crash, which prompted revisions of the police department’s vehicular pursuit policy, occurred on the city’s northwest side on the night of June 3, 2020. Francisco-Martinez was coming home from her first day on a new job when, with the green light, she drove into an intersection where the officer slammed into her vehicle with a marked police cruiser.
The driver of the vehicle that police were chasing remains in the Cook County Jail, where he is being held on $1 million bail on charges of first-degree murder, vehicular hijacking and other counts.
The department came under criticism for that chase as well as others that ended with crashes. Last year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that a “pursuit litigation analysis” prepared for Mayor Lori Lightfoot concluded that 180 out of 270 police chases in 2019 ended in crashes, including crashes in which a total of eight people died.
The city is defending itself in another lawsuit filed by the family of an 84-year-old retired teacher, Verona Gunn, who in was killed in 2019 when a police cruiser crashed into a police van in an intersection and careened into a car in which she was a passenger.
Minnesota
Lindell sues to recover cellphone seized by FBI agents
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell has sued the Department of Justice and the FBI, demanding the return of a cellphone agents seized from him outside a fast food restaurant in southern Minnesota last week, apparently as part of an investigation into an alleged scheme to breach voting system technology.
Lindell alleges in the complaint, filed Tuesday in federal court in Minnesota, that the confiscation of his iPhone violated his constitutional rights against unlawful search and seizure and an attempt to chill his freedom of speech. Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the 2020 presidential election, asked the court to order the return of his phone and to prohibit federal authorities from using any data they’ve accessed from it or from his cellular service provider.
FBI agents stopped Lindell at the drive-through window of a Hardee’s restaurant in Mankato on Sept. 13, when Lindell says he was on his way home from duck hunting with a friend in Iowa. They came with a search warrant, signed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Tony Leung on Sept. 7, that authorized them to seize his cellphone and data on it pertaining to Dominion Voting Systems, as well as to a Colorado county clerk and other alleged co-conspirators.
The complaint also says Lindell has been served with a grand jury subpoena dated Sept. 7 that seeks similar information to what the search warrant covered.
The scope of the federal grand jury probe in Colorado isn’t known, but local authorities there have charged Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters in what they’ve described as a “deceptive scheme, which was designed to influence public servants, breach security protocols, exceed permissible access to voting equipment and set in motion the eventual distribution of confidential information to unauthorized people.” She has pleaded not guilty.
Peters has appeared at several events with Lindell over the past year, including his “cybersymposium” in August 2021 in South Dakota at which a digital copy of Mesa County’s election management system was distributed.
According to Lindell’s complaint, the FBI agents boxed in his truck at the drive-through, then questioned him for 25 to 30 minutes about Dominion and Peters. It says the agents allowed Lindell to leave only after he handed over his phone.
Lindell says he needs the phone back because it’s the main way he runs MyPillow and affiliated businesses. His complaint alleges the government obtained the warrant in bad faith, and without apprising the magistrate judge of Lindell’s role in the Colorado case. He also alleges the government must have used his cellphone signals — or a tracking device on his truck — without a warrant, to find him at the Hardee’s.
Lindell is already the subject of a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion in the District of Columbia that says Lindell falsely accused the company of rigging the 2020 presidential election. In a separate case, a federal judge in Minnesota on Monday said a defamation lawsuit against Lindell by a different voting machine company, Smartmatic, can go forward.
Michigan
Woman pleads guilty to killing father, sister, and 2 handymen
CLARE, Mich. (AP) — A woman pleaded guilty Wednesday to killing her father, sister and two handymen in rural mid-Michigan last year.
Judy Boyer, 55, of Farwell admitted in court to killing all four with a .22-caliber rifle on Oct. 20, 2021, the Morning Sun reported.
Police were called to her father’s home that day for reports that two people had been shot and wounded. They found four victims: Henry Boyer, 85, daughter Patricia Boyer, 61, Zachary Salminen, 36, and Wade Bacon, 39. All were shot at the Boyer home in Grant Township.
Bacon and Salminen were there to work on the roof, authorities have said.
Judy Boyer pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the deaths of her father and sister and second-degree for killing Salminen and Bacon, Clare County Prosecutor Michelle Ambrozaitis said.
First-degree murder carries a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
A sentencing hearing will be scheduled for November.
Authorities have provided few details of the four killings or motives but said Boyer had a list of potential other victims.
