The death of Chicago Police Cmdr. Paul Bauer began with a fellow officer investigating one of the most mundane of offenses: A man urinating in public on Lower Wacker Drive.
During a pre-trial hearing Thursday for the man accused of murdering the decorated Near North commander, veteran police officers recounted the foot chase that led to the deadly encounter in a stairwell outside the Thompson Center, and putting the cuffs on Shomari Legghette.
The officers testified as Legghette’s lawyer sought to have Cook County Judge Erica Reddick throw out the arrest and bar prosecutors from using evidence — including the murder weapon, drugs and a flak vest Legghette was carrying when he was taken into custody — in a trial set to begin in two weeks. Defense lawyer Scott Kamin is also seeking to postpone the trial date.
Officer Raymond Haran testified that while on patrol in the afternoon of Feb. 13, 2018, he and his partner saw Legghette standing near one of the columns below Lower Wacker Drive, moving as if to undo his pants.
“He was urinating, or getting ready to urinate against a wall,” Haran recalled. “I said ‘C’mere. I wanna talk to you.’ And he said, ‘No, I’m good,’ and ran up the stairs.”
Haran gave chase and called for backup, describing the fleeing Legghette and warning that there had been a shooting in that area of Lower Wacker several days earlier. Parked across from the Thompson Center in an unmarked SUV, Deronis Cooper, a CPD officer assigned to the security detail for then city Treasurer Kurt Summers, heard the call and pulled over the curb on Randolph Street.
“Ten seconds later, I heard five to seven shots,” Cooper said.
He ran to a stairwell where he’d heard the shots, joined by two other officers who had swarmed to the central Loop in response to the call. Legghette was ascending the stairs, and the three officers flanked him and ordered him to lay dow on the staircase.
Cooper said he walked down and cuffed Legghette, spotting Bauer’s body on the stairwell. As he hauled Legghette up the stairs, Cooper said he felt a gun in Legghette’s pocket brushing his own leg, and heard the call for an officer down over police radio. An officer called, “He’s a cop!” from the stairwell. Cooper took the gun out of Legghette’s pocket and laid it on a planter, then turned it over to another CPD officer.
Thursday’s testimony was glimpse of key evidence that prosecutors hope to offer at trial: cameras captured Bauer, who was downtown for a meeting with aldermen at City Hall, going into the stairwell and Legghette coming out, but there were no witnesses nor video of what happened underground. An autopsy showed Bauer was shot six times, including two shots to the head, and the first EMT to respond to the scene was unable to detect his pulse.
Kamin argued that neither seeing Legghette preparing to urinate on a wall, nor even running up the stairs amid all the radio traffic about a fleeing suspect did not provide grounds for an arrest — a contention Assistant State’s Attorney John Maher said badly misconstrued the testimony.
“This is not about what happened on Lower Wacker Drive,” Maher said. “The only time [Legghette] is under arrest is when officers find him standing over a lifeless body... in a stairwell, within seconds of hearing gunshots.”
Reddick said she would rule on the motion to toss the arrest on Friday.
