Man: 'I already shot a cop. I'm not afraid to shoot her'
Moments after shooting an Arlington Heights police officer and leaving him critically wounded Thursday night, a Niles man phoned a 911 dispatcher, telling him he was in a basement with his estranged girlfriend and would shoot anyone who tried to enter, according to recordings obtained Monday by the Daily Herald.
“I already shot a cop. I'm not afraid to shoot her,” Eric M. Anderson tells the dispatcher about two minutes into the 911 recording, one of several stemming from the shooting and standoff released Monday by the Northwest Central Dispatch System.
Anderson, 41, placed the call after shooting Officer Michael McEvoy as police responded to reports of a domestic disturbance at a home on the 1900 block of Windham Court in Arlington Heights. Authorities said Anderson had tracked his former girlfriend to her mother's home just days after she obtained an order of protection against him.
McEvoy, the first officer through the home's door, was shot in the face. He remained hospitalized in critical condition over the weekend but is expected to make a full recovery, police said.
Anderson later was shot dead by officers when he pointed his gun at officers in the home's garage, authorities said.
In the 911 call made by Anderson, he immediately tells the unidentified dispatcher, “I just shot a cop,” and warns that he is prepared to shoot others.
“I'm in the basement,” he said. “If anybody comes in here, I'm shooting them.”
Asked if his former girlfriend is OK, Anderson replies, “Yes, she's fine,” before apparently handing over the phone to the 39-year-old woman.
“I need someone to come and help me, please,” she calmly states before Anderson takes back the phone.
The dispatcher tries several times to persuade Anderson to put down his weapon and continue talking with him, but Anderson tells him he doesn't have time for “chitchat.”
“Just don't shoot anyone else. Stay on the phone with me,” the dispatcher says.
“If anyone comes down here, that's it,” Anderson replies shortly before ending the call.
In an earlier 911 call, a woman who identifies herself as a friend of the home's owner tells a dispatcher there is someone in the home with a weapon, just before the sound of a gunshot is heard.
“Oh my God, he's shooting again,” she shouts. “He's shooting at my girlfriend's daughter. He has a restraining order against him, and he came in here and he won't leave us alone. Oh, please hurry.”
She later reports seeing a police officer arrive outside the home before the call goes dead.
Northwest Central Dispatch also released recordings of several calls from the estranged girlfriend's father, who was texting with his daughter during the ordeal from his home in Las Vegas. He relayed some details of what was happening in the basement to dispatchers, including how Anderson used a couch to barricade a door leading into a basement.
“My daughter said she is being held hostage and that this crazy guy Eric shot a police officer, I don't know, hopefully didn't wound him,” he states. “And said, ‘I'm being held hostage. Pray for me.'”
A friend of the estranged girlfriend also called 911 to describe texts she had been receiving from the woman. In one she said that Anderson had fired a shot at her mother but missed. Police said the woman's mother was able to escape the home.