Eric Smith

It was Tuesday, April 9, 1996, in the middle of the evening
rush hour. Wanda was driving Eric and his grandmother, Lillie
Pruitt, south on Interstate 55, the Stevenson Expressway. He had
just finished a session with his counselor, and was heading back
to his grandparents home in Joliet. The problem was that he
didn’t want to go.

Eric was agitated because he felt that he needed more time
with his counselor. Since it was hard to communicate with her
back turned toward her son, Wanda decided to pull the car off the
road. She also hoped that he would cool off. He didn’t.

Eric was determined. If his mom wasn’t going to turn the car
around, then he’d drive. Wanda tossed the keys out the car
window. Eric crossed into traffic to get the keys, and was struck
and grazed by a slow moving car. As he began to head back to his
mom’s car, he discovered that he now had company.

Walking Eric off the roadway were two white cops who had come
on the scene only moments earlier. Pete Bernal, 31 and Robert
Lawruk, 53, were from the nearby and nearly all-white suburban
Chicago town of Forest View – population 743. The town’s eighteen
member police force was so small that not even half the cops were
full time. Lawruk was one of those part-timers. Neither he or
Bernal evidently had any training in dealing with people with
hearing disabilities. It mean that the police had no way of
easily communicating with Eric, had they even wanted to make the
attempt.

http://www.cpsr.cs.uchicago.edu/countermedia/articles/9611.ericsmith.txt