For more than a decade, Tamara Latrice Tucker attended nearly every hearing involving the three men charged in the murder of her fiancé, Chicago Police Officer Clifton Lewis.
At a sentencing hearing for one of them, Tucker testified that Lewis had proposed to her on a Christmas morning after a yearslong courtship. Four days later, he was gunned down in a robbery at a convenience store where he worked security.
Tucker, who never married in the years after Lewis’ murder, died June 9 after a monthslong battle with cancer. She was 49.
Her death came just days before prosecutors dropped all charges against the alleged getaway driver and one of the men accused of shooting Lewis during the 2011 armed robbery. Her wake was Wednesday, a few hours after prosecutors dismissed the cases.
“I’m glad she wasn’t around to see it,” her father Ronald Tucker Sr. said as mourners left his daughter’s funeral at United Baptist Church. “It’s a shame.”
As guests began arriving at Tucker’s wake at a Lawndale funeral home, Tucker’s son Keyonta Thomas saw a news report about the case.
“It was just like, wow, how could this day get any worse?” Thomas, 30, said Friday. “It was actually a smack in the face to see, on the day of her visitation, that those charges were dropped.”
Tucker had never become bitter in the years after Lewis’ death, her son said, even as the case against the suspects unraveled amid allegations of misconduct by police and prosecutors.
“She was a very factual person,” Thomas said. “If it was the case that there was proof these guys didn’t do it, she was going to go by evidence and hard facts.”
The tragedy had moved her to return to school so she could become a juvenile probation officer. In March, even as she underwent chemotherapy, Tucker had led a group of juvenile defendants on a tour of Black colleges across the South, Thomas said.
“She just felt like, a lot of times, those kids are overlooked,” he said. “She felt it was just giving those kids someone they could feel safe with. She just wanted them to feel loved.”
Thomas said his mother believed that, without help, troubled kids might become involved in the kind of violence that led to Lewis’ murder.
“She was very conscious of that, especially after what happened with Cliff,” Tucker said. “It just pushed her to help more. She always believed in second chances.”
Edgardo Colon and Tyrone Clay were arrested for Lewis’ murder days after two masked men burst into M & M Quick Foods and opened fire on the off-duty officer. A third man, Alexander Villa, was arrested nearly two years later.
The case against them looked strong. Colon and Clay both had confessed under interrogation, police said, and a fourth man who had been in the getaway car testified that all three had made incriminating statements.
Grainy surveillance video played at Colon’s and Villa’s trials captured a chilling, violent scene. Two gunmen entered the store and quickly opened fire on Lewis. The officer managed to return fire and duck behind a counter for cover, but one of the gunmen, allegedly Clay, hurdled over the counter, shot Lewis three times and took his gun.
Colon and Villa were convicted in separate trials, but Colon’s guilty verdict was overturned when a judge ruled detectives had obtained his confession after Colon repeatedly asked for a lawyer.
Colon had been sentenced to 84 years in prison but was freed on bond in 2019 while awaiting his second trial. Clay spent 12 years in jail while awaiting trial, delayed years by lengthy appeals that also led to his own confession being thrown out.
Villa has yet to be sentenced following his 2019 guilty verdict. A new set of lawyers claim to have turned up a trove of evidence that was withheld from his trial attorneys, including an FBI cell tower analysis that indicates the three men’s phones were nowhere near the crime scene.
Colon addressed the officer’s family as he left the courthouse after the charges were dismissed.
“First off, my condolences to the Clifton Lewis family,” he said. “It is sad that, you know, that we had to do this time for something we did not do. ... Hopefully, they do find the real perpetrators and give closure to them.”
Lewis was remembered by his fellow officers as a “gentle giant” with a bass voice and kind heart.
Tucker wrote a book about her life with Lewis, a relationship that began when they met at a crime scene in Austin. Tucker was a witness, and Lewis was one of the responding officers, Thomas said.
They dated for more than 10 years. Lewis became a father figure to Thomas, who was 8 years old when the couple first got together. On Dec. 21, 2011, the family moved into new house that Lewis and Tucker bought, a few blocks from M & M Quick Foods.
After Lewis’ death, Tucker founded the Clifton P. Lewis Foundation, which raised money and collected school supplies for schoolchildren in Austin.
Thomas, a special education teacher, said he will take over the foundation and add his mother’s name to the title.
“My dad was her love, my dad was her person,” Thomas said. “I just get peace knowing that they are together.”
