Cop Supporters Taunt Black Lives Matter Group After Police-Involved Shooting

MT. GREENWOOD (CHICAGO, IL) -- An angry confrontation brewed Saturday evening between police supporters and Black Lives Matter hours after an African American man was fatally shot by an off-duty Chicago police sergeant in the city’s Mt. Greenwood neighborhood.

According to police, Joshua Beal, 25, of Indianapolis, fired a gun at officers following a physical and verbal altercation. Beal and family members had just attended another relative’s funeral, when the vehicle he was riding in stopped in front of firehouse in the 3100 block of West 111th Street.

Beal was shot by an off-duty police sergeant on his way to work when he saw Beal allegedly holding a gun in hands during a confrontation with another off-duty police officer and firefighter. After the man “failed to drop his weapon, shots were fired striking the individual multiple times,” police said in a news release.

Warning: Graphic language

Video by Patch editor

The Indianapolis man was brought to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn where he was pronounced dead.

Hours later, around 10 p.m., mere steps away from where crime tape still stretched around the corner of 111th Street and Kedzie Avenue, 15 protesters had gathered in a parking lot on the west side of Kedzie Avenue. Across the street a handful of counter protesters gathered, one with an American flag.

A man in a car pulling away from a bar and began taunting the protestors, “don’t pull a gun.” The protesters yelled back “go home.” Someone else across the street blurted out, “we are home, go back to your own neighborhood.”

Another yelled, “you’re killing each other.”

Video Black Lives Matter Facebook

The police supporters quickly grew in number until it was three times the number of the protesters. The crowd began crossing the street chanting, “CPD, CPD, CPD.”

Family members said that Beal was on his way to Mt. Hope to be a pall bearer for his cousin who had been murdered

Beal’s family alleged that at least four other relatives were arrested. Many gathered in the parking lot had waited hours after the shooting, which took place at 3 p.m., because they had car pooled to funeral and were left stranded because their vehicles were part of the crime scene.

The family contends that Beal did not provoke officers and was trying to show police his conceal-carry permit when he was shot.

Patch Editor Tim Moran contributed to this report.