Another police chase turned deadly triggers proposed $4.5 million settlement

Chicago taxpayers could spend $4.5 million to compensate the family of a 43-year-old mother of three struck and killed by a driver fleeing an Englewood traffic stop nearly four years ago.

The latest in a seemingly endless parade of settlements tied to police chases turned deadly is on the agenda at Monday’s meeting of the City Council’s Finance Committee.

If approved by the committee and the Council, that money would go to the estate of Lakisel Thomas, a working mom who was mowed down in broad daylight while crossing a street in the 7400 block of South Racine Avenue in Englewood to pick up lunch for her son in February 2021.

Thomas was struck and killed by 20-year-old Isaac Wade, who stopped briefly, then sped away from Chicago police officers who approached his vehicle after pulling Wade over for an improperly displaced registration tag.

The officers followed behind Wade at about 30 mph, prosecutors said, as Wade was allegedly driving his sister's silver Chevrolet Equinox at 80 mph and video-chatting with his girlfriend.

According to police, Wade then blew through a red light at Racine Avenue and 74th Street. He crashed into another vehicle before his car ricocheted and struck Thomas. The 42-year-old woman suffered a broken neck and other injuries, dying a short time later at St. Bernard Hospital.

Wade was subsequently charged with reckless homicide and accused by a judge of using his vehicle as a weapon.

"A vehicle is a weapon when someone is driving fast, when someone's not driving safe for conditions, when someone is driving at a high rate of speed just because they don't want to be stopped by police," Judge Arthur Wesley Willis said at the time.

CPD officers responding to the crash said they saw Wade throw an "L-shaped" object by the passenger side of the vehicle where his cousin sat and they later found a gun on the car's floorboard, prosecutors said.

Wade claimed the gun was his cousin's and that it was his cousin who encouraged him to drive away from officers earlier because he was on electronic monitoring for a pending weapons case, prosecutors said at the time.

Wade's cousin said the gun was Wade's, prosecutors said.

At the time of the fatal crash, Wade was out on bond for a 2017 attempted murder case. He was also awaiting sentencing for a 2016 armed robbery and aggravated use of a weapon charge in Juvenile Court, prosecutors said. He also was charged as a juvenile for an aggravated robbery in 2017.

Wade's defense attorney called the deadly crash an "accident” where “unfortunately somebody died.”

Over the years, Chicago taxpayers have shelled out millions to innocent pedestrians, motorists and passengers killed or injured during police pursuits gone bad even though the vehicular chase policy has been overhauled repeatedly.

The largest police chase settlement in Chicago history — $45 million — was authorized last year.

It went to Nathen Jones, who suffered a “massive traumatic brain injury” that left him on a feeding tube, unable to walk or speak.

Two other especially costly settlements stemmed from police pursuits on the same weekend in June 1999.

LaTanya Haggerty, 26 and Robert Russ, 22, both Black and unarmed, were shot to death by officers after separate police pursuits, touching off a summer filled with protests about alleged police brutality. Those incidents led to a combined $27.6 million in payments to their families.

The $4.5 million settlement is one of six on the Finance Committee agenda. The grand total for all of the payouts up for committee approval is $39.35 million.