CHICAGO — An Indiana man who admitted to straw-purchasing the handgun later used to kill Chicago police Officer Ella French and critically wound her partner during a traffic stop last year was sentenced Wednesday to 2 1/2 years in prison.
The sentence, half the five-year maximum Jamel Danzy could have received, was handed down in a courtroom full of Chicago police officers after Elizabeth French, the mother of Ella French, addressed the court. French said she had last spoken with her daughter right before her fateful shift. They spoke of vacation plans and Elizabeth told her daughter to be careful and safe, and that she loved her.
“I am forever grateful that I got the chance to say something,” she told U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman.
Elizabeth French received a call later that night that her daughter had been shot.
She was taken into a small waiting room at the hospital, where she said, “The doctor begins with, ‘I’m so sorry,’ ... I didn’t hear anything until he got to the end and asked if I had any questions.”
French said she asked the doctor if her daughter had suffered and the doctor said no, and she hoped he wasn’t lying to her, she said. She then agreed to see her daughter’s body.
“My heart shattered. ... My lovely baby girl is lying on a table, still and silent in death. ... I am sobbing, ‘My baby girl, my baby girl,’” she said. “I hug her. I hold her face. ... I want her to wake up and start talking to me.”
Elizabeth French and her daughter will be buried together, she said.
“There will never be more birthdays, meals or trips together,” she said. “I will never again tell Ella how proud I am of her.”
French then turned from the podium to face Danzy instead of the judge as she continued her statement.
“What did you think that weapon was for?” she said. “Someday you will walk out of prison and return to your life. ... Your choices took my daughter from me forever. ... Nothing you can do or say will bring my Ella back. nothing this court can do can bring my Ella back.”
Elizabeth turned back to the judge and said Danzy deserved a maximum sentence.
Gettleman said even though many in the room were angry, the sentence had to be just.
“I feel the grief and I feel the anger that I witnessed in this proceeding today, but anger and grief basically lead to vengeance,” the judge said, adding he had no evidence Danzy knew where the weapon was headed.
Danzy also gave a statement to the judge, his right foot bounced as he spoke.
“I take full responsibility for what I have done,” he said. “This should have never happened.”
Danzy said he gives his condolences to the families of the victims.
“My family knows me as a hardworking individual who never gives up,” he said. “I have a good heart and don’t mean harm to anyone.”
Danzy has been working since he was 18 years old and has never been in trouble with the law before this, he said. He is currently working at a clinic with autistic children.
After the sentencing was read, the officers who filled the courtroom’s gallery gathered together on the 17th floor. Many hugged Elizabeth French.
Some discussed among themselves how disappointed they were with the sentencing decision.
Meanwhile, Danzy and his group made their way down the opposite elevators, and Danzy kept his jacket hood up and face mask on as they hurried out of the building and away from news cameras. He is expected to turn himself in at a later date.
Prosecutors have asked for the maximum term of five years in prison for Danzy, writing in a court filing earlier this month that straw purchasers often put illegal firearms into the hands of “dangerous people” who drive much of the city’s seemingly endless violence.
“Violent criminals in this city are growing increasingly dismissive of the law and the consequences of their actions,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Prashant Kolluri wrote. “At this moment in this city, it is critically important that sentences for straw purchasing offenses reflect that these are serious offenses that cannot be tolerated.”
Danzy, 30, pleaded guilty in July to one count of federal firearm conspiracy.
Danzy’s attorneys, Holly Blaine and James Vanzant, filed their sentencing memo under seal. But in a response to the government’s request, they indicated they would be seeking a term of not more than a year and a half, writing “there is no evidence in the record that Mr. Danzy was actually aware that the firearm he bought ... would be used by a third party to kill anyone, much less a police officer.”
In advance of the sentencing, prosecutors last week submitted 80 pages of letters from current and Chicago police officers and department brass asking Gettleman to impose for a stiff sentence for Danzy and reflecting on both the loss of French and the life-altering injuries suffered by her partner, Officer Carlos Yanez, who is no longer on the force.
“We lost a hero, someone who fought for what was right and, from all accounts, treated everyone with care, dignity and respect,” Sgt. Sharon Boyd, whose team acts as liaisons for families of officers killed or injured in the line of duty, wrote about French. “The look on her mother’s face when the doctor came into the waiting area and the darkness that came over our city are indescribable.”
Another cop, who identified himself only as Officer Hernandez, said it broke his heart when he got the call that his “sister in blue” had been killed.
“Ella was fierce, humble, and so loving to anyone that was graced by her presence,” he wrote.
Other letters were submitted by Chicago Police Department Executive Director Tina Skahill, Chief of Patrol Brian McDermott, and a handful of district commanders from across the city. In her note, Skahill referenced a letter sent to Gettleman from Chicago police Superintendent David Brown, but Brown’s correspondence was not included in the court record.
French was killed and her partner was critically wounded in August 2021 after stopping a Honda SUV with expired tags in the West Englewood neighborhood. Two brothers who were in the Honda, Eric and Emonte Morgan, are charged with first-degree murder and a litany of other felonies stemming from the shooting and are awaiting trial.
Investigators, meanwhile, traced both the .22-caliber Glock semiautomatic pistol used to shoot French and the car the Morgan brothers were in to Danzy, who was charged in U.S. District Court a few days after the killing, court records show.
Records showed that Danzy bought the gun in March 2021 from a licensed dealer in Hammond, where he claimed to be buying the weapon for himself. ATF agents tracked down Danzy at the restaurant where he worked, and he agreed to be interviewed on tape in an agent’s car in the parking lot.
Agents showed him the paperwork from the dealer, and at first he claimed to have bought the gun for himself. But after further questioning, he admitted he instead had bought it for his good friend, Eric Morgan, who had a felony record and could not buy a gun for himself, according to the plea.
Morgan went to Indiana to pick up the gun shortly after Danzy purchased it, according to prosecutors. The same gun was found in the yard where Morgan was arrested on the night of French’s killing, according to prosecutors.
In his plea agreement, Danzy also admitted to straw-purchasing a second firearm around the same time period for his cousin, who was also a felon and barred from possessing guns.
Danzy, who has no prior criminal record, obtained a master’s degree and had recently been working as a youth camp counselor and teaching assistant, records show.
