Thornton Township and Dolton trustees say a lawsuit filed last week falsely claims they conspired to start a brawl at a township meeting last month.
The lawsuit, by former Thornton Township employee and Tiffany Henyard’s boyfriend Kamal Woods, says three Thornton Township trustees, five Dolton officials and public relations specialist Nakita Cloud hired community activist Jedidiah Brown to “stalk and harass” Woods and Henyard for months leading up to the Jan. 28 brawl.
Thornton Township Trustee Christopher Gonzalez is named in the lawsuit and said Friday he sees it as one of many that takes aim against Henyard’s political enemies.
“Just lots of allegations, not much behind them,” Gonzalez said. “Just more baseless stuff.”
Gonzalez said he has not yet been served but considers the lawsuit a distraction from his official duties as trustee. He said he is choosing to focus on preparing the township budget, which the board has discussed at the last two board meetings. The next Thornton Township meeting will be at 6 p.m. on Monday in South Holland, Gonzalez said.
The Jan. 28 Thornton Township meeting erupted into a brawl that Henyard jumped into during the meeting’s public comment period. Brown, in his comments, used inflammatory language, attacking Henyard personally and in her leadership roles as Thornton Township supervisor and Dolton mayor. After calling Henyard an expletive, he walked toward the table where the supervisor and other township officials were seated before spinning around toward the back of the building, where the fight then broke out.
Woods, in his lawsuit, alleges Brown was hired to act as a “provocateur” during the township meeting.
“His language was strictly intended to incite Mr. Woods to react to the verbal attacks against his significant other,” the lawsuit alleges.
Woods is seeking $10 million in damages, which attorney Michael McGrath said is a “ridiculous” claim for damages.
“There is never a need to include a claim for damages in any specific amount over the jurisdictional required amount, unless you want to make headlines,” McGrath, who said he will represent the Dolton trustees, wrote in an email to the Daily Southtown. “This was the plaintiff’s intent and seems to be the outcome he sought … I would be very surprised if he prevails on any claims against the Township defendants.”
He said videos of the melee show Woods as the instigator.
Dolton Trustee Jason House, who is named in the lawsuit and looking to unseat Henyard in Tuesday’s primary election, dismissed Woods’ claim he hired Brown.
“It’s an outrageous claim,” House said. “It’s a waste of oxygen.”
“Her claim is laughable,” House said of Henyard posting on social media that he and other trustees hired Brown to harass Henyard.
“We expect the baseless claims to be dismissed quickly,” he said.
In a video posted to her Facebook page Feb. 12, Henyard, with her attorney, Beau Brindley, levels the charge that Brown has been stalking her.
“He actually has been stalking the mayor when she is with her family in her private time,” Brindley said.
Henyard did, in January, file paperwork in Cook County court seeking a restraining order against Brown.
Brindley said Brown was carrying a knife at the township meeting — a matter that has been widely argued on social media — and that he swung it in the direction of Woods.
“This is an important man in her (Henyard’s) life and he was being threatened with a deadly weapon,” Brindley said in the video.
Brindley said that “the truth has been lost,” in the dissection of what took place at the meeting.
“Truth is overrun by spectacle and sensationalism,” he said.
House said Brown’s first involvement with Dolton came on behalf of a now former village employee who alleges in a lawsuit she was sexually assaulted by a Dolton official during a village trip to Las Vegas. That lawsuit is pending in Cook County court.
House said Brown, a frequent attendee at Village Board and township meetings, became more involved in Dolton’s political scene.
“His advocacy expanded to the corruption he saw” on the part of the village’s administration, House said.
He said that he and Brown have no relationship beyond Brown’s involvement in Dolton politics.
House leads a slate of candidates in the Tuesday primary and seeks to block Henyard’s attempt at a second term. He would be up for reelection as a trustee this year, and if he fails in his mayoral bid would be off the Village Board.
Henyard has her own slate of trustee and village clerk candidates.
Brown said in his federal lawsuit that Henyard and Woods conspired against him to deprive him of his “constitutional rights of freedom of speech by physically attacking him” during the township meeting.
It was a ploy, Brown alleges, to disrupt the meeting so that no action would be taken on a possible suspension of Woods.
Brown said in his lawsuit that during the melee he was punched and kicked, then taken to a separate room where a private security employee also physically abused him. Brown said he went to a hospital emergency room the day after the meeting for treatment.
Brown, in his lawsuit, said that after the melee, he filed a report with the South Holland Police Department but was “treated as an aggressor by law enforcement.” The village of South Holland confirmed Friday a report was filed, but said no arrests have been made.
Woods was placed on leave during the Jan. 28 township meeting, but was fired at a subsequent meeting Feb. 6.
Before the brawl, trustees met in closed session to discuss the employment of Woods, who served as director of the township’s At-Risk Youth Program.
In his lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court, Woods said he was hired in November 2022 as the full-time director of the township’s At-Risk Youth Program.
In August 2024, according to records obtained by the Chicago Tribune and Daily Southtown, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity received a federal subpoena for all records related to Thornton Township and “Project B Youth Violence Prevention.”
A spokesperson for the state DCEO said at the time that Thornton Township had received $7.1 million in grant money since 2020, and Plan B Youth Violence Prevention was among the programs funded by a $500,000 grant “for violence interruption, community development and operational expenses and administrative costs.”
The address given for the program, on Sibley Boulevard in Dolton, comes up in Cook County records as a car wash business.
“DCEO was not apprised of the reason for the subpoena,” the statement said, adding that the agency provided the requested documents to federal authorities.
Woods, in his lawsuit, said he is the “significant other” of Henyard, but has become “collateral damage” as a result of the controversy surrounding her role as mayor and supervisor.
Woods alleges he has unwittingly been the victim of “politically motivated verbal attacks and unsubstantiated accusations against his significant other, which have caused him to be caught in a whirlwind of political controversy and thus a political target.”
