EX-CON KILLS COP, THEN ATTACKS POLICE BUILDING

COP KILLING: FACTS ARE CLEAR, BUT QUESTIONS ABOUND
Convicted felon denied bail in mystifying attack on Chicago police officer
　
By William Lee and Annie Sweeney
　
Chicago Tribune
July 9, 2010
　
Before ripping away Chicago police officer Thor Soderberg's handgun and shooting him dead with it, Bryant Brewer, a felon with a long arrest record, inexplicably tried getting inside the last place anyone would expect him to go: a renovated police facility full of cops.

Moments before Soderbergh, an 11-year police veteran, was killed Wednesday, Brewer strolled down 61st Street, screaming and hollering at no one in particular before he tried opening a locked door to the old Englewood police station that now serves as a police deployment center, according to a witness.

After Brewer killed the officer, he fired shots at a stranger sitting across the street and then peppered the facade of the police building with gunshots before being shot by responding officers, prosecutors said Friday.

Three officers who came out of the police building returned fire, striking Brewer once in the chest.

What exactly drew Brewer, 24, to the facility at 6120 S. Racine Ave. was not clear two days after Soderberg's slaying, which occurred just after he had finished his day and stood behind his car in a parking lot adjacent to the police building.

While Brewer remained hospitalized Friday under police guard, Cook County Judge Ramon Ocasio III denied him bail on charges of first-degree murder of a police officer, attempted first-degree murder and armed robbery in the potential capital case.

"The entire department is saddened beyond belief," police Superintendent Jody Weis said at a news conference. "The entire city should be enraged."

Weis said robbery appeared to be the motive for the attack on Soderberg, 43. Brewer's family has said he suffered from mental illness.

"From everything we've seen so far, we have somebody who was just trying to rob and attack an individual and that individual (happened) to be a police officer. So I don't know what was going through this guy's head, why he would attack a police officer in broad daylight. That's something, I guess, only he will know," Weis said.

In court, Assistant State's Attorney John Dillon said that after Brewer shot Soderberg three times, he crossed the street to an apartment building, opened fire on Richard Mints, 51, and stole his tool bag. Mints ran from the gunfire and wasn't injured.Dillon said Brewer then walked to the middle of Racine Avenue and began firing at the police building.
　
A north suburban native, Soderberg was an instructor at the police training academy but had been deployed to the Englewood facility for a special task force aimed at combating youth violence.

Weis said the 43-year-old triathlete was leaving work to play in a volleyball game when he was shot.