The ropy scar in the crook of Rylan Wilder’s left elbow has faded. The pain no longer throbs. But all it takes is the sight of a passing police car to bring it all back — that “terrible sense of dread,” he says.
For the 19-year-old’s mother, an ambulance does the same for her — a reminder of the vehicle racing to get her son to a hospital in time.
They got some relief, though, when Wilder signed off this week on a $1.9 million settlement with the city of Des Plaines.
It comes about four years after a Des Plaines police officer, in pursuit of a bank robber, came into Upbeat Music & Arts on the Northwest Side — where Wilder was an intern — and opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle, accidentally shooting the Chicago teenager.
The bullet tore a playing-card-sized hole in the crook of Wilder’s elbow, destroying an artery, shredding a nerve, obliterating bone, casting his dream of using his guitar to carve out his future in doubt. Wilder, who lost half of the blood in his body, needed more than a dozen operations and three years of physical therapy.
The Wilders sued in Cook County circuit court, saying Officer James Armstrong’s actions were “excessive” and that he displayed “reckless, willful and wanton conduct.”
“It’s nice that I get some money out of it,” Rylan Wilder said Wednesday at his attorney’s office downtown. “But I would have been a lot happier to see something on a larger scale take place so this would never happen to anyone else again.”
Wilder’s shooting followed a Nov. 19, 2019, bank robbery in Des Plaines that led to a police chase into the city. One robber, Maurice Murphy, was arrested not far from the bank, convicted of armed robbery and is in prison. Chicago police said the other, Christopher Willis, carjacked a Buick and made it to the Northwest Side, where he opened fire, injuring an officer. Willis ran in to the music school, Armstrong came after him, shooting and killing him but badly wounding Wilder.
A written statement from Des Plaines officials said the city “does not admit to any wrongdoing or liability. Additionally, Officer Armstrong was dismissed from the lawsuit and cleared of any wrongdoing. This settlement does not reflect the heroic actions that Officer Armstrong took that day, putting his life at risk to save others. Officer Armstrong is still employed with the city of Des Plaines.”
In April 2021, Des Plaines police Chief David Anderson told the Chicago Sun-Times that, after viewing the school’s surveillance video multiple times, he wasn’t sure Armstrong fired the shot that hit Wilder, that it might have been the robber.
The Chicago police disputed that, saying at the time: “We did confirm that the 15-year-old victim and the offender were shot by Des Plaines police.”
Tim Cavanagh, the Wilder family’s lawyer, said: “The suggestion that anyone other than a Des Plaines police officer shot Rylan Wilder is nonsense. The video makes very clear that the bullet that struck Rylan’s arm came from a military weapon held by Officer Armstrong.”
Cavanagh said he was prepared to have experts testify that the bullet “definitely came from Armstrong’s ... weapon.”
Anderson has said Armstrong was trying to stop “a very violent, active shooter” and that he did the best he could under the circumstances.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office decided not to charge Armstrong with any crime, concluding he was “justified in using deadly force” against the bank robber, that the teenager being shot was unintentional and that the Des Plaines cop acted “reasonably.”
The settlement doesn’t address any changes in police pursuit guidelines or firearm usage.
“We would hope they would take a good, hard look at their internal polices and procedures and retrain all these officers,” Cavanagh said.
After the shooting, Wilder recovered enough to again play the guitar and played once again with his band at the time, Monarchy Over Monday. The band broke up in 2021, Wilder said, the result of “the combination of artistic differences and the stress of going to school, plus physical therapy.”
Wilder, who’s now a sophomore at Columbia College Chicago, said he’s still playing and writing music and recently produced a song for his singer-girlfriend.
He said he doesn’t feel pain every day as he once did. But he said: “My whole arm still feels very numb. I can’t feel in most of my fingers or in my hand.”
His mother, Lucia Morales, said of the settlement: “Hopefully, this will help him be better taken care of. But it still doesn’t change the fact that they really messed up and that it could potentially happen to someone again.”
