At last week’s meeting of the Park Forest Village Board, the uniform of the day was a T-shirt honoring village police Officer Timothy Jones, who eight years ago was felled by two bullets to the head, fired by an angry man with a deadly weapon.
Today, Jones’ locker remains at the Police Department where he now is an honorary detective. A “Tim Jones” street sign hangs from a light pole on Indianwood Boulevard, just steps from where a dozen Park Forest police vehicles park, one bearing the name” Tim Strong 204” (his badge number) on its back doors.
We’ve been here before, but the story is worth repeating.
Early morning Saturday, March 19, 2016, the 24-year-old Jones, a Park Forest police officer for less than one year, along with two fellow officers, responded to a break-in at a vacant home on the 300 block of Neola Avenue. A perimeter was established and the intruder was told to come out.
Inside the house, 21-year-old Thurman Reynolds, who grew up in Park Forest, moved to Texas but came back home, was jobless and homeless, but had a gun and his friends later said he had a bad temper.
In the last moments of his angry, aimless life, Reynolds rushed out of the house, firing two shots at Jones before police shot and killed him. Those bullets, however, found their mark. One hit Jones in the head. The second bullet struck his jaw, before lodging in his chest.
One man dead, another near death. No one wins in such a deadly game.
The call went out quickly. “Officer down.”
That two-word phrase is the most alarming in the vocabulary of every police department. It means a member of a close-knit family in blue was seriously injured.
Or worse.
Jones is the son of William Jones, who at the time was the Country Club Hills police chief. It was Pete Green, then the Park Forest police chief, who rushed to the Jones’ home to break the news.
“I had to be the one to tell him,” Green recalled. “I told him Tim was shot. He kept asking me ‘is he dead? I can handle it. Tell me if he’s dead.’”
“I don’t know,” was Green’s forlorn reply.
When father saw son in his blood-drenched uniform at St. James hospital in Olympia Fields, he asked the doctor “is he gone?” The doctor said no but shook his head. Another doctor replied that the odds of winning the Powerball were better than that of the fallen officer living one more day.
For the next two weeks, from the emergency room at St. James and later when he was taken by helicopter to the level-one trauma center in the Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, the Jones family stayed at his side.
There is an unwritten but permanent bond that links the police to a fallen comrade. It was on display as more than 200 police personnel of all ranks and departments lined the hospital halls in a silent tribute as Jones was wheeled in.
Less than a week later, perhaps a thousand ordinary citizens mingled with police from a dozen departments as they thronged into a Matteson restaurant, where for more than three hours, 20% of each food order and the sale of T-shirts bearing his name were earmarked for a fund to help defray hospital expenses. At 6:30 that evening, the line stretched out the door and down the street. Four hours later, people were still waiting for their turn.
People cared, people cried and people prayed.
More than two weeks after he was shot, Tim Jones still clung to life and, after an operation around Easter, Tim’s father rushed in to see him.
“His eyes were open,” he said. “They were blinking and staring at me. The father knew this was not a reflex action, but a knowing response. “We knew we had our miracle.”
In the Jewish tradition, names of those who are ailing are mentioned for a special prayer during the weekly service. Every week, along with others, the name of Tim Jones is said at our temple.
Jerry Shnay at jerryshnay@gmail.com is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.
