June 27--A Cook County jury has awarded $2.1 million in damages to the family of a 78-year-old woman killed when her vehicle was struck by a sport-utility vehicle the family's attorneys said was fleeing Chicago police in 2008, according to a news release and court records.
Tommye Ruth Freeman was driving east at the 7600 block of South State Street on July 3, 2008, when her vehicle was struck by a white SUV that ran a red light, according to a statement from attorneys representing Freeman's family. She died of injuries suffered during the crash hours later. On Thursday, a jury awarded her family $2.1 million in damages in a lawsuit filed in 2009.
Freeman's family's attorneys said police investigating a nonviolent residential burglary in the 7700 block of South Langley Avenue were chasing the SUV when it collided with Freeman's vehicle.
Byron Brown, 30, who was driving the SUV, was convicted of murder in Freeman's death in 2012, and is serving a 25-year prison sentence in that case, according to court and state records. He also pleaded guilty in 2014 in a separate federal murder-conspiracy case, admitting that he committed three murders and was present at two others while a member of the Hobo street gang.
Attorneys for the City of Chicago argued police weren't chasing the SUV, but simply "monitoring" it, according to the release. But attorneys representing Freeman's family argued they were "willful and wanton" and violated police procedures in speeding behind the SUV against the flow of traffic on a one-way street in a residential area.
A spokesman for the city of Chicago's Law Department did not immediately have comment on the case.
