Crime & Law
Jury Awards Nearly $80M to Family of Girl Killed During 2020 Chicago Police Chase
(Michael Izquierdo / WTTW News)
A Cook County jury ordered the city of Chicago to pay $79.85 million to the family of a 10-year-old girl who was killed after a 2020 police chase.
Da’Karia Spicer was killed, and her father and 5-year-old brother were seriously injured, in the crash that occurred on Sept. 2, 2020, near 80th and Halsted streets. The family was on their way to the fifth grader’s school to pick up a computer so she could participate in remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chicago Police officers attempted to pull over a Mercedes-Benz after they observed the vehicle using an alley as a thru street. The driver refused to stop, and the officers pursed the car, into the intersection of 80th and Halsted, where both vehicles ran a stop sign, according to lawsuit filed by the Spicer family, who was represented by the law firm of Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard.
The Mercedes struck a car, and both vehicles collided with the Spicers’ Honda.
“The impact of this incident was catastrophic, and the Spicer family lost a bright, talented and smart 10-year-old girl who was the absolute light of their lives,” Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard Managing Partner Patrick A. Salvi II said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the city’s Department of Law said officials are “reviewing the verdict.”
If the verdict is upheld, it would nearly equal city’s annual $82 million budget to cover the cost of police misconduct lawsuits.
In all, Chicago taxpayers have spent more than $73 million from January 2019 to August 2024 to resolve two dozen lawsuits filed by Chicagoans injured during police pursuits, according to an analysis of city data by WTTW News.
Da’Karia Spicer (Photo provided)
Da’Karia was killed just weeks after the Chicago Police Department changed its policy for vehicle pursuits. That policy requires officers to “consider the need for immediate apprehension of an eluding suspect and the requirement to protect the public from the danger created by eluding offenders” and ensures that no officer could be disciplined for terminating a pursuit.
Marked police cars must also take the lead in pursuits, and activate their lights and sirens, according to the revised policy.
Video recorded during the pursuit from inside the police car shows one officer predicting a crash, and that when that collision then happened seconds later, the officer driving the police SUV yelled out “boom.”
Lawyers for the city did not dispute that the police pursuit caused Da’Karia’s death, reversing a position taken by then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who said the fatal crash was unrelated to the police pursuit.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
