Page 32 - February 2018 FOP Newsletter

STAND CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31
So while the impetus for being here recalled a painful trag- edy, the events of Jan. 16 – and subsequent hearings on this matter – confirmed why the Lodge 7 moved its general meeting outside the confines of the FOP for the first time since anybody can remember.
“All the people who showed up really knew the significance of this hearing and how it important it was to honor people they worked with and mourned over,” Lodge 7 President Kevin Gra- ham reinforced. “God forbid that should happen to one of our members, we would expect the next generation to make sure the killers stay in jail.”
We all felt the pain
Underwood can still hear the silence that engulfed roll call in the 24th District on the afternoon of Feb. 9, 1982. The an- nouncement that Fahey and O’Brien had been shot felt like a punch in the mouth, following the punch in the stomach that had come four days earlier.
On Feb. 5, Officer James Doyle was shot and killed when asked to check out a suspect on a South Side CTA bus. Fahey and O’Brien were returning from Doyle’s funeral when they ob- served a late-model Chevrolet run a red light at 81st and Mor- gan Streets.
O’Brien approached the driver’s side of the car. Fahey moved to the passenger side, ordered Andrew Wilson out of the car and patted him down for a weapon. As he was attempting to hand- cuff the suspect, Wilson gained control of Fahey’s .357 Magnum revolver, whirled around and fired at close range. The bullet struck Fahey behind the left ear.
Then Andrew Wilson swung around and fired two shots point-blank at O’Brien, striking him in the left arm and left hip. In his confession, Jackie Wilson said that after he shouted that
to his brother O’Brien was alive and moving, his brother shot the officer again as O’Brien lay wounded on the ground.
O’Brien died a short time after the shooting. Fahey died the following morning without regaining consciousness.
In one of the many macabre twists in the case of the murders, investigators learned that Jackie and Andrew Wilson were on their way to Cook County Hospital to free Edgar Hope, the man charged with killing James Doyle. Hope was recovering under guard from his wounds sustained in the shootout with Doyle’s partner.
The death of Officer Edgar A. Clay resulting from a struggle with a student wielding a .22-caliber handgun 12 days earlier Doyle began one of the most gruesome periods ever for Chi- cago Police Officers. A few weeks earlier, two off-duty sheriffs working security were gunned down at a McDonald’s on the far South Side. They were off duty sherriff’s deputies working security, making it five officers shot, four fatally, in less than a month. One of the offenders in the McDonald’s shooting was Edgar Hope, a close friend of the Wilson’s, who shot three cops in a month, two fatally.
Harold Bourret was working in the 2nd District and in the midst of his 32-year career at the time, and Darrin could tell how much this hurt when he saw his father come home on Feb. 9.
“He couldn’t believe this was going on,” confided Darrin, who was in high school at the time. “We all felt the pain that was go- ing on. It was very stressful on our family.”
Ultimately, it was citizen cooperation that broke the Wilson case. A tip from a body-and-fender shop led to apprehending Andrew Wilson five days after he shot Fahey and O’Brien. Three hours later, officers from 002 arrested Jackie, thanks to a South- Side minister who passed on a tip from someone in his congre- gation.
32 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ FEBRUARY 2018