Chicago Council Panel to Consider $15.5 Million in Settlements Over Deaths Tied to First Responders

Chicago taxpayers are being asked to cover $15.5 million in settlements with two families who lost relatives in incidents that allege mistakes by first responders. The City Council's Finance Committee is scheduled to take up the proposals on Wednesday.

The largest, at $8 million, would go to the family of Leonardo Guerrero, 44, who stopped breathing after being strapped to a stretcher inside a Chicago Fire Department ambulance on Aug. 31, 2022. The Cook County medical examiner's office ruled his death from cardiac arrest a homicide, finding that the physical restraints applied by paramedics partly caused the fatal heart attack. High blood pressure brought on by alcohol and cocaine use was a contributing factor, according to the office.

The city's exposure was heightened because the paramedic-in-charge was fired for failing to attend to Guerrero and for allegedly trying to cover up errors by falsifying a report on his death. A second paramedic was suspended.

According to the family's lawsuit, paramedics arrived at a parking lot near Guerrero's Buena Park home at about 2:35 a.m. and found him naked and in physical and emotional distress, saying he was "going to die and experiencing labored breathing." The suit says they did not examine him or take his vitals or history. Instead, they allegedly made him walk 50 to 60 feet unassisted to the ambulance, handcuffed him, secured him to a stretcher with a chest restraint and drove him to Thorek Hospital while he was "lapsing in and out of consciousness."

The lawsuit states that Guerrero remained in the ambulance outside the hospital for five to six minutes before the paramedic-in-charge loosened the restraint, checked his pulse for the first time and found he had stopped breathing. By the time the second paramedic returned from the emergency room, Guerrero was in cardiac arrest, with monitoring equipment applied for the first time, and the paramedic-in-charge was performing CPR. The suit says the falsified report wrongly claimed he "just coded right as we pulled in," that assessments were done and the hospital was called three times beforehand, and that paramedics were first to notice he had stopped breathing, when in fact a police officer in the ambulance did.

The committee will also consider a $7.5 million settlement for the family of Adelbert and Yvonne Lee-Wilson. The pastor and her husband were driving home from church in the Far South Side's Pullman neighborhood in February 2022 when a driver being chased at high speed by Chicago police struck their car. Both were killed. She was 66 and he was 69.

Their lawsuit alleges officers began the pursuit without probable cause, kept up the chase at dangerous speeds without regard to conditions, ignored general orders restricting pursuits through residential areas, and failed to end it "when the risks to human life outweighed the benefits" of catching the suspect.

A third proposed settlement, for $950,000, would go to Franklin Paz, a former Chicago police lieutenant who became a whistleblower. His January 2021 lawsuit claims he was removed from the citywide Community Safety Team after objecting to "illegal" quotas for traffic stops, arrests and other police activity set by then-Deputy Chief Michael Barz. The unit's roster included Officer Ella French, who was fatally shot during a traffic stop in Englewood on Aug. 7, 2021; her partner, Carlos Yanez, was seriously wounded.

According to the suit, Barz told Paz each officer under his supervision was expected to produce at least 10 "blue cards" daily, the state-mandated forms used to collect demographic information on people who are stopped. Paz was then demoted. The settlement would avert a civil trial expected to expose accusations that department leaders pushed traffic-stop quotas at the behest of former Supt. David Brown, who, according to pretrial testimony, called for 10,000 such stops each week and insisted the practice would build trust.