Elk Grove Village Settles for $10.5 Million Over Police Shooting of Man in Mental Health Crisis
After trial: Settled before trial in Cook County Circuit Court with no appeal. The village's insurance carriers funded the settlement apart from the village's deductible.
Won by Romanucci & Blandin.
Jack Murray, 24, was shot and killed by Elk Grove Village police on December 1, 2023, after he called 911 during a mental health crisis. His mother sued the village and its officers for wrongful death in Cook County Circuit Court. In June 2026 the village board approved a $10.5 million settlement, funded almost entirely by the village's insurance carriers.
What happened
On December 1, 2023, Jack Murray, 24, called 911 from his family's home on Fern Drive in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, during a mental health crisis. Officers were dispatched to what was treated as a mental health call. Within about a minute of Murray walking out of the house holding a kitchen knife, police fired five shots. He died of his wounds at Ascension Alexian Brothers Hospital.
Murray was not a stranger to the department. According to the reporting on the case, Elk Grove Village police had dealt with him at least 26 times before, and had previously connected him with mental health services. The officers who responded knew who he was, and the call came in as a mental health emergency.
His mother, Donna Murray, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court in May 2024 against the village and its officers. She was represented by Antonio Romanucci and Joshua Levin of Romanucci & Blandin. The family's case rested on what the officers did and did not do in the minute before the shooting. They said Murray was about 18 feet away, that officers did not create distance or warn him that he could be shot, that a less-lethal beanbag gun was not deployed until after the shots, and that the officers ignored crisis-intervention training and department de-escalation policies. Body camera footage released by the village shows officers ordering Murray to raise his hands and using a Taser on him seconds before they opened fire.
The village disputed that account. The Cook County State's Attorney had declined to bring criminal charges, concluding the knife posed a real threat and that Murray did not drop it. Mayor Craig Johnson said multiple outside agencies had exonerated the officers, and that the village agreed to settle at the insistence of its insurance carriers, who faced the prospect of a jury award. Romanucci answered that the decision to settle did not mean the officers were exonerated, and called the mayor's comments appalling.
The Elk Grove Village board approved the $10.5 million settlement in June 2026, roughly two and a half years after the shooting and before any trial. The village's insurers covered it apart from the village's deductible. Counsel for the family described it as the largest reported civil settlement in Illinois for a police shooting in which the person killed was not a bystander. Murray's mother told reporters, 'We are truly fractured. We are broken. And that can never be fixed.'
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.CBS Chicago, '$10.5 million settlement for family of man shot and killed by Elk Grove Village police', June 2026·Archived copy
- 2.Chicago Sun-Times, 'Elk Grove Village to pay $10.5 million to family of man killed by police officers in 2023', June 17, 2026
- 3.ABC7 Chicago, 'Elk Grove Village reaches $10.5M settlement with family of Jack Murray', June 2026
- 4.Journal & Topics, '$10.5 Million Settlement Reached In Fatal Shooting Of Elk Grove Man In 2023', June 2026·Archived copy
- 5.Patch, '$10.5M Settlement Reached In Fatal Elk Grove Police Shooting', June 2026·Archived copy
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