Waukegan protest 1

Photo by Raven Geary.

Family and community members mourn at a vigil for Marcellis Stinnette in Waukegan, Illinois. Photo by Raven Geary.

‘We Feel Like We’re Responsible for Waukegan’

Relatives of Marcellis Stinnette, a Black teenager killed by a police officer in Waukegan, Illinois last week, are calling for peace and justice.

by

Not a single window has been broken in Waukegan, Illinois. 

On October 20, Marcellis Stinnette was shot to death, and his girlfriend Tafara Williams was wounded by Waukegan police. But there has been no looting, no flames, and no national spectacle. Only grief. 

It is in this landscape, in a city divided starkly along race and class lines, that Black Waukegan residents have had to bear the weight of yet another teen killed by police. 

Situated between Chicago and Kenosha, Waukegan serves as the seat of Lake County, Illinois. Waukegan, a city of around 90,000 people, is characterized by its wealth. Like the rest of Chicago’s northern suburbs, it’s home to many sprawling estates, and countless cookie-cutter cul-de-sacs occupied by high-income families. 

But recent figures paint a darker picture of suburban poverty. Residents of Waukegan suffer from income disparities not unlike those across Chicago, due in part to new economic and immigration patterns. In recent years, thousands of Mexican and Central American workers have come to Lake County for jobs in the service industry. Almost 40 percent of residents are rent-or-mortgage insecure; one in ten have inadequate access to food; and almost 70 percent of children in Waukegan—and in the neighboring city of Zion, Illinois—qualify for free lunch. 

It is in this landscape, in a city divided starkly along race and class lines, that Black Waukegan residents have had to bear the weight of yet another teen killed by police. 

As news of looting in Philadelphia following the murder of Walter Wallace, Jr. flooded social media, the hashtag #MarcellisStinnette faded to a whimper. There was no footage of cop cars burning in Waukegan to share, no images of armored riot police squaring off with protesters. Just families and neighbors gutted by Stinnette’s death and the now-fatherless six-month-old he leaves behind. 

Undoubtedly, there is only so much mourning one can do at a time. Four Black Americans have been turned into hashtags just in one week, by this author’s count. With coronavirus cases surging and a once-in-a-lifetime election looming, the news is simply unable to keep up, even at a frantic pace. 

On October 29, The Daily Beast identified the names of the two Waukegan police officers involved in the shooting: Dante Salinas and James Keating. Released videos show Officer Keating pulling up to Stinnette and Williams as they sat in Williams’ car outside of their home. Keating threatened to arrest Stinnette based on an existing warrant (so far, no active warrant has been found). Williams then drove away—reportedly in fear for her life, as Keating had a hand on his gun—before crashing her car just down the street. 

Salinas, apparently, was already at the scene, but he activated his body camera only after his weapon was drawn. He opened fire, wounding Williams and killing Stinnette. 

“They allowed him to die,” Tafara Williams said from the hospital. “They wanted us to bleed out on the ground.”

According to Williams, who spoke to reporters via Zoom from the hospital, Stinnette bled on the ground for eight minutes while officers refused to render aid. Williams, still bleeding from the abdomen, witnessed Salinas and Keating cover Stinnette with a blanket. “They allowed him to die,” she said. “They wanted us to bleed out on the ground.” 

Last week, Salinas claimed he shot the couple after Williams reversed the car into him during a traffic stop—a statement the video footage does not seem to corroborate. Despite the lack of evidence to support Salinas’s version of the events that night, city officials continue to stress that they have been transparent in releasing new information.

“There is no selective portions of the videos. The videos that were provided this afternoon were the sections of the occurrence that took place between point A and point Z,” a lawyer representing the city said at a press conference on Wednesday. “You will receive 100 percent of what’s out there. There’s no cover-up.”

Others are not so certain. “Is this a cover-up?” Clyde McLemore, founder of the Black Lives Matter chapter of Lake County, asked at Saturday’s protest, pointing to the freshly painted side of the building at the corner of Helmholz and Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue where Stinnette was shot. 

A previous police killing occurred in 2015 in nearby Zion. Seventeen-year-old Justus Howell was shot in the back and killed while running from Officer Eric Hill. While prosecutors determined the shooting was justified, Howell’s family continues to challenge the police version of events, and the Lake County State’s Attorney’s office has refused to re-open the case. 

In 2016, a jury rejected a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the officer and the city. The events following Howell’s death have left many in Waukegan feeling like justice may not be seen in the Marcellis Stinnette case. Justus Howell’s name is one of many that has been called out at the ongoing protests in Waukegan. 

Just two months ago, the same law firm representing the Stinnette family filed documents alleging that Dante Salinas wrongfully arrested and battered another Waukegan resident, Angel Salgado, in 2019. 

According to the complaint, Salinas tased and pistol-whipped Salgado, and fractured bones in his face. Similar to the Stinnette case, the officers involved are accused of having no reasonable suspicion for stopping or questioning Salgado. Police chief Wayne Wallas and the City of Waukegan are named in both suits—one on the behalf of Stinnette filed Thursday—for enabling a pattern of unjustified stops. 

The mayor of Waukegan, Sam Cunningham, himself once a resident of Waukegan’s majority-Black “South Side” neighborhood, has worked alongside Wallas in an effort to repair the community’s broken trust in law enforcement. The Stinnette shooting, however, has thrown those plans into chaos. 

After news of Stinnette’s death broke and protests erupted, it took three days for the police department to fire Salinas, a delay some activists have cited as too long (protesters are also calling for Salinas’s arrest). Last Friday, State’s Attorney Nerheim announced a U.S. Justice Department investigation into the incident. Others are asking to involve Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.

“I think Marcellis knew he was gonna die,” Zharvellis Holmes, Stinnette’s mother, said in an interview with NBC Chicago’s Stefan Holt on Thursday. Two hours before his death, Marcellis had sent her a video of himself rapping. “And [he] told me to help the people and that’s what I’m gonna do, and I’m not gonna stop until I die.”

On Sunday, October 25, a crowd flooded to the site of the shooting for a vigil. Neighborhood residents towed their children in wagons, tears flowed freely, and pleas to avoid damaging the community continued. A choir sang. 

“My brother didn’t die for no reason,”  Zhanellis Banks, Marcellis Stinnette’s sister, said. “He died for change.”

“We feel like we’re responsible for Waukegan right now,” said Stinnette’s great aunt Francelis Stinnette Watts on Wednesday. 

The family’s calls for non-violence, bolstered by their attorneys, Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and Mayor Cunningham, have been strictly heeded. At a protest last Saturday, one young man’s cries of “burn it down!” were met with disapproval from grieving family members. 

“We’re looking forward to making this the last death in this county, and hopefully across the country,” attorney Kevin O’Connor said at a tearful press conference on Wednesday. It was Stinnette’s parents’ and sisters’ first public appearance in Waukegan. “I feel that this is a catalyst of a group of people that are committed to doing that.” 

Marcellis Stinnette’s older sister, Zhanellis Banks, then led the family in a cry of “say his name!”

“My brother didn’t die for no reason. He died for change,” she said, gripping a photo of Marcellis.