Family, Classmates Hold Vigil Outside Quintonio LeGrier's Old High School
(CBS) -- Classmates and the family of Quintonio LeGrier attended a vigil Tuesday night across the street from his old high school, Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep.
Friends, LeGrier's mother and his foster sister told the crowd he was smart and witty, not mentally disturbed. Mother Janet Cooksey asked how someone who was 30 feet from police, possibly holding a bat, could have posed a lethal threat.
Police officers standing outside the building in which LeGrier lived with his father opened fire from the sidewalk, also killing 55-year-old downstairs neighbor Bettie Jones, who had been asked by LeGrier's father to open the door for police.
Neither the police department nor the Independent Police Review Authority has provided details, nor said why officers felt compelled to shoot.
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Cooksey said he was a "typical teenager," home for break from studies at Northern Illinois University.
"He's very loving, very calm, not a violent person at all and as far as mental illness, he did not have (any) history of mental illness," Cooksey said.
Cooksey and other family members said LeGrier was shot seven times, including one bullet wound to his buttocks.
Quintonio's foster mother Mary Strenger was also at the vigil. Strenger says she cared for LeGrier since he was five years old.
"He never raised his voice at me," she said. "He was a straight-A student."
Both Strenger and Quintonio's biological mother believe he got angry with his father Saturday morning but insist he was not an unstable person.
They did offer a glimpse into LeGrier's childhood. Strenger said she even tried to adopt the teen but his father wouldn't allow it.
"I was trying to get him to see his dad and he didn't want to see his dad or his mom," Strenger said.
Toyarn Strenger said the 19-year-old LeGrier lived with her family for a dozen years and said she considered him to be her baby brother.
"I just don't understand why from the back you get shot, and the innocent lady who opened the door, she got shot, and both of them get killed on the morning after Christmas," Stringer said. It's just baffling to me."
Friends, classmates and family members gathered around a flagpole in Palmer Park, across the street from Brooks, on the 200 block of East 111th Street. Several dozen of the 200 or so mourners left candles, despite the stiff wind that swept through the park. Police squad cars sat in the distance and the gates to Brooks were shut.
