WEB EXTRA!
A 911 phone call by a young man threatening to kill himself shut down the 1000 and 1100 blocks of South Oak Park Avenue Tuesday afternoon for nearly two and a half hours, forcing traffic to be re-routed and nearby residents to evacuate their homes.
The man, identified as Rodney R. Jones, 19, gave inconsistent indications that he was either in the home or in Chicago over the course of six cell phone conversations with a police negotiator. Special response (SWAT) officers eventually forced their way into the residence just after 5 p.m. and found it empty, but found a broken .22 caliber pistol that Jones had told police was there.
People were allowed back into their homes just before 5:30, and traffic was allowed back onto Oak Park Avenue shortly there after.
Oak Park Chief of Police Rick Tanksley said police responded to a call from a home in the 1100 block of Oak Park Ave. around 3 p.m. Special response team officers were called in along with a police negotiator, and an area bounded by Lexington Street to the north, Fillmore Street to the south, and the alleys west and east of Oak Park Avenue.
Police were able to get Jone’s cell phone number from his sister, and the negotiator, Detective Shatonya Harris, called him.
“He said he was going to shoot himself,” said Harris.
Harris said Jones, after some initial agitation, was calm and cooperative through most of their contact, except when he became upset over the thought of going to jail, or of the possibility of police damaging his mother’s home.
Harris said Jones also became upset after police told his girlfriend and others not to take his calls in order to force him to talk only with them.
Harris said Jones told her he was afraid to tell police where he was for fear of arrest due to his being on probation for a conviction while he was a juvenile.
Police began to suspect that Jones was not in the house after determining that his cell phone signal was beaming off a tower at Oak Park and the Eisenhower Expressway. Jones also told Harris that he didn’t have a gun with him, then that he had a gun, a broken .22 caliber handgun in the house.
At 5:15 p.m. eight SWAT officers armed with assault rifles and crouching behind shields forced their way through the residence’s front door. They found the home empty, and the gun where Jones said it was.
In his last conversation with Harris, Jones told her his battery was dying, and said he was walking on east of Harlem Avenue and south of Ogden Avenue. He said he had only 15 cents in his pockets, and that he didn’t intend to hurt anyone.
As of 6 p.m. police were working to locate Jones.
See the Feb. 28 Wednesday Journal for further details on this story.