Park Forest Mayor Joe Woods and Village Trustee Randall White exchanged barbed comments during Monday’s Village Board meeting, stemming from Woods’ claim he was attacked by a husband and wife in the village’s downtown area earlier this month.
In a statement Saturday, Woods wrote he was the victim of a violent crime in which one of the assailants had a large knife in his hands, and Woods said at one point he was “knocked to the ground.”
The altercation took place near a restaurant at which a garbage bin fire had just been extinguished.
Woods stated Village Trustee Tiffani Graham stepped in “by putting her body between me and the assailants.”
Woods wrote he was shocked to learn the couple had filed a police report and wanted compensation for injuries they claim to have suffered, including the loss of teeth, and wrote “my only option would be to exercise my rights as a victim.”
He then filed his own report with the Police Department before asking an outside police office to get involved.
At Monday’s board meeting, the mayor added that “after a couple of minutes of an embarrassingly profane verbal back and forth, I left and went home. Because the assailants were acquaintances, I did not immediately report the incident to police.”
However, he filed a police report last week and said, pending the outcome an investigation, he will “ultimately file charges.”
White, in his first term on the Village Board, responded “the truth needs to be told” about what he claimed was a secret group seeking to impose its “moral compass on the community.”
White said during the meeting that Woods, who he called the group’s highest ranking member, “went on a drunken rage and viciously attacked a family right here in Park Forest.”
White said too many people in town “cover up for each other” by claiming “Park Forest is the greatest place on earth.”
Woods said he is asking for an investigation by an outside police agency “in the interest of transparency” and said while he was aware some people would use the incident “for political purposes,” he was “confident that the truth will prevail.”
An edited cellphone video taken by the daughter of the couple involved in the brawl, as well as a portion of statements made to police by the couple, show Woods and another person wrestling with each other, followed by a person Identified as Graham in front of Woods and holding out her hand in a visible attempt to stop another person.
In a later statement to police, also recorded by the daughter, the man involved in the clash claimed he was pushed against a truck by Woods, which resulted in loss of some teeth.
A village employee said it was likely the Cook County Sheriff’s Department would handle the probe, but because of the Democratic National Convention and officers assisting there, any probe would start later this month.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.