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Officer Down

July 2, 2008 By Mark Draughn Leave a Comment

Well, this sucks:

A 27-year veteran Chicago police officer was shot in the head and killed by a woman who grabbed his gun during a struggle outside a police headquarters on the North Side early Wednesday, authorities said.

Officers who responded to the scene at Belmont and Western Avenues around 2 a.m. then shot the woman several times, critically wounding her, they said.

Belmont District Officer Richard Francis, 60, was taken to Illinois Masonic Medical Center and pronounced dead just before 3 a.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. He was the first police officer fatally shot in the line of duty since 2002.

In other reports, the woman is described as mentally disturbed. And somehow she managed to take a gun away from a veteran officer and kill him with it. No rhyme or reason to it.

My condolences to the Francis family. I’m sorry for their loss.

Filed Under: Chicago News

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