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City will seek to dismiss federal complaint in shooting death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo

Madeline Buckley, Chicago Tribune on

Published in News & Features

CHICAGO — The city of Chicago plans to seek dismissal of a new federal complaint filed by the family of Adam Toledo, the 13-year-old boy who was shot and killed by a Chicago police officer in 2021, according to documents filed Thursday, even as the family is pushing for a January trial date.

A report, filed in federal court in Chicago, offers the first look at the status of the federal civil case in the March 29, 2021 police shooting that roiled the city, after a state court case was abruptly dropped just before jury selection was about to set off a high-profile trial.

The status report, which was written jointly by attorneys for Toledo’s parents, as well as the city and Officer Eric Stillman, indicates at least several months more of litigation and evidence production for a case that was on the eve of trial earlier this year. And no settlement appears to be on the horizon, with the parties noting in the report that “settlement discussions did not resolve the matter.”

The civil matter stems from the shooting of Toledo just after 2:30 a.m. following a pursuit. Stillman shot Toledo after the chase in an alley behind Farragut Career Academy High School in Little Village. At the time, the boy was the youngest person to be fatally shot by a Chicago police officer in years, with the shooting leading to protests, calls for reform and eventually policy changes around when and how police can chase people.

Toledo’s family has alleged that Stillman wrongly killed the boy, while also accusing the city of Chicago of negligence in its hiring and training of Stillman, who had preexisting health problems.

In the report, Toledo’s family proposed that a trial should begin around Jan. 15, 2027, noting that the parties have already done extensive work producing tens of thousands of documents and deposing potential witnesses.

But the defendants said they anticipate filing a motion to dismiss the claim, arguing that the Toledo family has filed the federal complaint too late, missing the legal deadlines to bring the claim.

 

The case took a unusual route to get to a federal courtroom, with the complaint having first been filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County in 2022, just under a year after the shooting took place.

But in April, as the parties were immersed in arguing more than 200 motions, battling over which evidence and witnesses would be presented to the jury, the attorney for the Toledo family dismissed the case in a strategic move after an unfavorable ruling from Cook County Judge Thomas Lyons.

Lyons granted a motion from the city of Chicago to split the trial in two, severing the claims of negligent hiring by the city from the allegations around the shooting by Stillman. The allegations against Stillman would proceed first, the judge ruled, and only if the Toledo family won their case would the other claims proceed — a win for the city.

Adeena Weiss Ortiz, who represents the Toledo family, countered that the city sought to “sanitize” the events surrounding the boy’s death, arguing that the attorneys “don’t want the jury to hear the issues that arose when Eric Stillman was hired.”

The parties are scheduled to appear before a federal judge next week.

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©2026 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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