CHICAGO — Prosecutors say a man on parole for shooting someone during a robbery fired several shots over the heads of two Chicago police officers as they wrote parking tickets over the weekend.
Judge William Fahy held the man, 32-year-old Quincy Newell, without bail during a bond hearing Monday afternoon.
Wearing full uniforms and seated inside a fully marked Chicago police squad car, the officers were writing citations around 2 p.m. Sunday in the 200 block of West 45th Street, just west of the Dan Ryan Expressway, prosecutor Sarah Dale-Schmidt told the judge.
One of the officers noticed Newell sitting in a nearby car with one foot sticking out of the driver’s door, pointing a gun toward the cops and moving it side-to-side, Dale-Schmidt alleged.
Newell then aimed the gun over the officers’ heads and fired about eight shots, she continued. Another vehicle owner later reported that their front passenger window was shot out near 45th and Wells, about a half-block from where the shots were fired.
The officers chased Newell, but he got away. When other cops pulled him over on the Dan Ryan, Newell briefly stopped, then allegedly sped off, leading them on a 30-minute chase before being caught.
At least one of the officers who were writing tickets identified him as the person who fired shots, Dale-Schmidt said. Officers found an unloaded handgun on the center console of his car and a 9-millimeter bullet on the floorboard, according to Dale-Schmidt. Another eight 9-millimeter shell casings were found at the shooting scene.
But the gun in the car was a 40-caliber, which Dale-Schmimdt said was capable of firing 9-millimeter rounds.
Newell’s defense attorney expressed doubt about that possibility and argued that the officers who were writing tickets provided “incredibly vague” descriptions of the gunman and the vehicle that could match any number of people and cars in the area.
The judge, Fahy, was unconvinced and agreed to grant the state’s request for no bail.
Dale-Schmidt said Newel is on parole for aggravated battery by discharging a firearm and aggravated discharge of a firearm stemming from an attempted robbery in 2013.
In that case, Newell and an accomplice tried to rob two victims after meeting up with them to buy iPhones they were selling on Facebook, Dale-Schmidt said. At one point, Newell ordered them to turn over everything he had. One victim ran, and Newell fired a shot at him that missed. He then shot the second victim “about three times” in the leg and lower back, according to Dale-Schmidt.
Newell was sentenced to eleven years plus a concurrent four years for that case. He was paroled last June.
