The Murders
Three months later, Allen still seethed with resentment over the incident. Early in the afternoon of March 3, 1979, Allen visited a locksmith and glazier with a curious question. He wanted to know if the glass in Chicago police cruisers was bulletproof. The proprietor of the shop, Stanley Evans, told him that only Chicago riot wagons had bulletproof glass.
Two and a half hours later, Allen parked his brown Ford across the street from Chicago police officers William Bosak and Roger van Schaik as they were conducting a routine traffic stop. With the officer's back to him, Allen opened fire on Bosak with a .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol, emptying the clip. Bosak was hit three times and was killed instantly.
Allen drew a second pistol and exited his car to engage Van Schaik—who was on the opposite side of the unmarked police cruiser from Allen—in a gun battle, the two men circling the officers' car. Both men exhausted their ammunition without scoring a hit. Allen then returned to his car and retrieved a .30 caliber carbine rifle, again opening fire on Van Schaik, wounding but not killing the officer. The rifle jammed after two or three shots. While Van Schaik lay wounded on the ground, Allen retrieved the .38 caliber service revolver from the corpse of Officer Bosak. He returned to the front of the car where the wounded Van Schaik lay, pleading for his life, and executed him with two shots to the face at point blank range.
Allen remained on the scene until two other officers arrived in response to the distress call. He initially fled in his car but quickly returned, attempting to shoot the officers as he drove past. Several more squad cars arrived in pursuit of Allen, still firing from the windows with the service revolver and a now unjammed carbine. After two collisions with police cruisers and one with a CTA bus, Allen was finally stopped when Officer Lawrence Rapien intentionally steered his cruiser head on into Allen's car.
Several guns were confiscated from Allen's car, along with about 250 rounds of ammunition, and a notebook containing the names, addresses, license plate numbers and phone numbers of several police officers and Everette Braden, the judge who had signed the search warrant authorizing Chicago Police to enter Allen's home.
Read more about this topic: Kenneth Allen (murderer)
Famous quotes containing the word murders:
“Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
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