Oct. 31--Sandra Harris awakened around 2 a.m. that cold spring morning, surprised that her husband, Chicago police Officer David Harris, wasn't lying by her side.
"I didn't feel him next to me," she said. "I went downstairs and he wasn't there."
She grabbed the phone, but it rang before she could dial. It was one of his fellow cops, waiting on the other side of her front door with terrible news. Officer Harris was killed March 14 when a white van evading a south suburban police officer ran a red light and crashed into Harris' black Lexus at 87th Street and Lafayette Avenue.
A Tribune investigation in August found that the high-speed chase that took Harris' life should have never happened. A Calumet Park police officer said in his report that he pursued the van believing it might be stolen, despite his agency's policy against chasing stolen vehicles unless they are involved in a violent felony. The officer had been fired or forced out of five of seven previous departments that employed him.
And it turned out the van wasn't even stolen. Although marijuana was recovered, there was no evidence of a violent crime before the pursuit, during which the van struck and killed an uninvolved 10-year Chicago police veteran who happened to be driving to his Scottsdale neighborhood home after work.
A Horses of Honor statue was erected in David Harris' name this week at 33 N. Dearborn St., commissioned by his family's attorneys at Corboy Demetrio. It's part of a citywide public art display of life-size police horses memorializing about 90 fallen Chicago police officers, as well as some who were severely wounded. The statues will be auctioned off in early December, with the proceeds benefiting the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation.
David Harris' sons -- 11-year-old David and 9-year-old Caleb -- each painted a blue handprint on either side of the horse's saddle. In an interview with the Tribune, his widow spoke in detail for the first time about the morning of the crash and her grief after losing her husband.
After the crash, uniformed and plainclothed police officers gathered at the accident site, and a line of police cars escorted the ambulance carrying his body to the morgue.
"You're sure it's my David?" she said she kept asking authorities that morning. "I didn't believe it."
David Harris had earned 87 department awards and most recently worked on a special "saturation" team in some of the city's most high-crime blocks. But Sandra Harris said she didn't worry about him when he left for work because he was born to be a cop.
His mother, Nora Harris, said he wanted to wear a uniform ever since a police officer gave him a business card in preschool. She said he kept that card until his death.
"He was always focused," she said. "He always knew what he wanted."
Sandra Harris filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court in September, alleging that the village of Calumet Park and police Officer Jerald Nettles initiated a high-speed police pursuit that posed a greater danger to the community than the suspect. Nettles continued the pursuit outside the boundaries of Calumet Park without approval, despite a supervisor's order to terminate, according to the lawsuit.
Calumet Park officials and their attorneys have declined to comment on the case. Nettles resigned in April with no disciplinary action related to the crash. His attorneys declined to comment on the lawsuit. The driver of the van, 32-year-old Shanell Terrell, of Calumet Park, faces first-degree murder charges.
Sandra Harris also declined to talk about the details of the lawsuit, focusing instead on memories of her husband.
David and Sandra Harris met in a health club. At their second meeting, he hugged her and referred to her as his wife. After they'd dated a few years, he took her to a jewelry shop and asked, as if in jest, which ring she'd select. She picked the same engagement ring that he'd secretly purchased for her before they arrived together.
They would have been married 14 years this year.
She says their sons are coping. They miss their dad, particularly jumping on him and roughhousing when he returned home from work. That's a ritual Sandra Harris said she just can't replicate.
"Things that dads do with their boys," she said. "The fact that he's not there, I know that bothers them."
eleventis@tribune.com
