Family matriarch Betty Salters was shopping for the Thanksgiving dinner she loved to cook when the SUV she was riding in was struck by a squad car speeding through a South Side intersection to assist with a nearby arrest.

Salters and her two-year-old granddaughter, who were riding in the backseat, were thrown from a rear passenger window that blew out on impact during the November, 2005 accident at the intersection of 63rd and Saint Lawrence. Salters was dead on arrival at Cook County Hospital. Two-year-old Quintaniya Jackson suffered a head injury, but has largely recovered.

Today, a City Council committee approved a $3.5 million settlement to compensate the Salters family for the loss of a 56-year-old woman who had cared for two adult daughters with learning disabilities and served as foster mother to two grandchildren.

Chicago Police Lt. Albert Wolf, who blew through a red light at “upwards of 60 m.p.h.,” according to plaintiffs and witnesses, was suspended for just two days.


Read more at: http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/1568236,fatal-squad-car-crash-settlement-051109.article