Mundelein police shooting of Mary Alice Love ruled a homicide: ‘A big deal for the family’

The fatal police shooting of Mary Alice Love, the 37-year-old Black Mundelein woman killed in May during a mental health crisis, has been ruled a homicide, a potential step toward criminal charges for the involved officer.

“This was a big issue, a big deal for the family,” said Love family attorney Kevin O’Connor, praising the ruling. “This was a homicide by this police officer shooting her.”

Immediately after the ruling, Love family members met with Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart to discuss the potential criminal aspects of the case, O’Connor said.

Although he couldn’t share additional details of that discussion, he said the family was “very happy” with the meeting.

O’Connor said the primary distinction that was put forward in the Lake County coroner’s inquest — consisting of the coroner and six jurors — was whether Love’s death had been a homicide or a “suicide by cop.”

Any criminal charges would be handled by the state’s attorney’s office, according to O’Connor. The investigative team had been waiting for “the final piece of evidence” from the coroner’s inquest before moving ahead, he said.

As part of an agreement, next week the family will view the entirety of footage from the incident, as well as all 911 calls related to the shooting, “not just the edited version that the city has put out,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor, who is working with the family on a civil action that has not yet been filed, again called for Mundelein to fire the involved officer, and take immediate action to ensure officers are “trained properly, because this could happen to somebody else while this is all pending.”

Such efforts would not be a liability for the village either, he argued, since “subsequent remedial measures” are protected by law and are not admissible into evidence.

“The guy who did this is a sergeant; he’s the guy supposedly training the officers underneath him,” O’Connor said. “This is an infection that’s going to rage through the department because they’ve been improperly trained.”

Mundelein police officers responded May 11 to the home of Love’s mother, Jeffry, for calls of a woman in a mental health crisis. In a video released by the department that includes bodycam footage, officers are brought into the house by Jeffry Love. Mary Alice Love can be seen sitting outside through a glass sliding door.

One officer notes she has a knife, and when they try to move Jeffry Love, she falls back. Mary Alice Love is seen getting up and yelling. She slides open the door, and an officer fires four times, killing her. The video includes graphics outlining the knife Love was carrying.

O’Connor has argued Love’s death was a fatal mishandling of the situation, including a failure to follow crisis-intervention training and de-escalation techniques.

O’Connor has said previously that because of the reflectiveness of the rear door’s glass, Love could only see her mother was being “tackled.” While she was holding a knife, she “never pointed it at anybody” and was shot before she entered the house.

The incident is a reflection of deeper issues of racism and the police’s response to mental health crisis incidents, O’Connor said.

A crisis interventionist from Waukegan was reportedly on their way, and police could have waited or done more to de-escalate, he said.

Since the shooting, Jeffry Love has “suffered terribly,” O’Connor said, including having “medical procedures” done related to stress.

“It’s been a terrible strain on her,” he said. “I’ve asked her personally to stay home, to care for her health, but she said she has to be there to fight for her daughter.”