Even the police admit Joy Magill has a right to be upset.
Angry would be a better way to describe her emotions after her home in the 400 block of Weston Avenue in Aurora was riddled by gunfire on the evening of April 27 and no one with guns and badges showed up that night, even after her desperate 911 call.
The Aurora Police Department, including Police Chief Keith Cross, personally apologized to the family for what happened that evening, which Magill sincerely appreciates.
But that mea culpa does little to alleviate her frustrations or the fear she and family still feel after this terrifying experience.
“He doesn’t even want to come outside; he’s not comfortable,” Magill said of her teenage son with autism. “I still don’t get a good night’s sleep myself.”
It was close to 11 p.m. that evening – she was in the upstairs bedroom while her husband was playing video games with their two boys, ages 17 and 12, in their room – when she said the first “sounds of buckshot” rang out.
Magill went to the window and called 911. She hit the floor as she heard more shots, and was told by the dispatcher it definitely sounded like gunfire and to get her children to a safe place.
At first the family huddled in the upstairs bathroom but then decided to head to the basement. Within a minute or two of that first emergency call, the 911 dispatcher called back, reassuring her police were in the area and that what she heard was just fireworks.
“And no one came,” McGill said.
According to Aurora police, two additional 911 calls from neighbors were received after Magill’s call, but none were witnesses.
“At approximately the same time an officer was patrolling the area and believed the sounds were fireworks,” Chief Keith Cross said in a written statement, adding that officers arrived on the scene within 35 seconds of the police dispatch and the area was checked by officers, with no evidence of a shooting or damage reported.
But Magill’s gut feeling became reality the following morning when the family noticed the results of that shotgun apparently fired from a side bush at the front of the home. Authorities reported it, as well, when they arrived around 10 a.m. after her call to APD.
On Thursday, I too saw the damage. And it was not pretty.
On the west side of the house’s closed-in porch, the glass is demolished from projectiles from the shooting that ripped through a window and shredded an orange curtain that now has a large gaping hole. Inside the porch, a row of filing cabinets – where she and her husband keep supplies for their deck and fence business – was riddled during the shooting, with some of the projectiles making it through the metal containers and striking the window to the living room.
“We can only thank God,” McGill says, that no one was in that area when the shooting occurred.
A couple of window frames, also shot up, continue to be a stark reminder to her family that whoever had been hiding in those bushes was looking to do some serious damage.
“I’ve lived here since 2004 and never seen anything like this,” Magill told me, adding that the family is “living paycheck to paycheck” and does not have the money to meet the insurance deductible required for repairs.
Cross indicated he and other officers spoke to Magill and offered an apology and the chief did so again in his written statement.
“As a department we strive to provide the highest level of service to our community,” he said. “In this case internal gaps in communication and the misidentification of gunfire led to a delay in recovering evidence and initiating an investigation.
“We acknowledge our response fell short that evening and we have taken steps to address that both internally and with the victim.”
Cross also confirmed the investigation remains active and leads are being pursued, but no arrests have been made.
Magill, who becomes emotional even a month later when talking about the shooting and its aftermath, tells me she has a good idea who was behind it. And while she’s “disgusted” by what happened, “I forgive” those who are responsible for the shooting.
“We raised our children in church. When they go to school I tell them to be someone’s hope today because we don’t know what each person has been through,” she said. ”I hope he gets caught before he does anything further … this could have been a murder.”
The shooting might have been prevented had the street not been so dark, Magill also maintains, pointing out a couple of ComEd lights, one of which she says was not even working.
In the Aurora Police Department letter, Cross indicated those concerns have been “addressed and corrected.” But Magill is adamant far more illumination is needed, not only on the 400 block of Weston – a stone’s throw from the newly- renovated old Copley Hospital complex now known as Bloomhaven – but all over the East Side.
Magill’s other hope? That the negative her family’s experienced will somehow lead to a brighter community, literally.
“We need to light up the East Side,” she insisted. “This is supposed to be the City of Lights. That means all over Aurora, not just parts of it.”
dcrosby@tribpub.com
