An Illinois cop begged for her life before she was gunned down in cold blood with her own service weapon!
“At the time Sullivan fired the fatal shots into Sgt. Rittmanic, Sgt. Rittmanic was pleading with them to just leave, ‘you don’t have to do this, please just go, please don’t please don’t.’ She was desperately pleading for her life,” Kankakee County State’s Attorney Jim Rowe said in court on Jan 3.
“Sullivan” was Darius Sullivan; he and Xandria Harris were both charged in the shooting that left Sgt. Marlene Rittmanic dead, and her partner, Officer Tyler Bailey, gravely wounded.
According to court documents released to the media, Rittmanic and Bailey were shot on Dec 29 while responding to a Comfort Inn Hotel along a highway in Kankakee County regarding barking dogs that were left inside of a vehicle. They found the room where the vehicle’s possible owner was staying and were shot while talking to the people in that room, the sheriff’s office said.
The officers were taken to nearby hospitals, where Rittmanic died, and Bailey was listed in critical condition and underwent surgery, the Bradley Police Department said.
State Attorney Rowe has submitted an official request to federal prosecutors, asking them to review the first-degree murder cases pending against Sullivan and Harris and to pursue a federal death sentence for both defendants.
Rowe said that Bailey remains hospitalized and is “fighting for his life.
During the arraignment, Rowe said that 25-year-old Darius Sullivan had his own gun and used it to shoot Bailey in the head after the officers knocked on the pair’s hotel room door, after responding to the noise complaint, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Rowe said Sullivan then allegedly shot at Rittmanic as she tried to run away before he chased her down a hallway and pinned her against a door. As Sullivan and Rittmanic scuffled, he said Sullivan called out to Harris, and she then helped him forcefully wrest Rittmanic gun away from her.
Rowe said the encounter was all captured on Rittmanic’s body camera.
He said Sullivan and Harris then allegedly stood over Rittmanic, pointing both guns at her as she lay on the floor, already shot once.
“Sgt. Rittmanic was pleading with them to, ‘Just leave, you don’t have to do this, please just go, please don’t, please don’t,’” Rowe said. “She was desperately pleading for her life.”
While Harris held Sullivan’s gun, Sullivan allegedly fired two shots from what prosecutors believe to be Rittmanic’s gun, striking the sergeant in the neck area, Rowe said.
Sullivan and Harris are charged with fatally shooting Rittmanic, 49, and critically wounding Bailey, 27. Sullivan, who was arrested in Indiana, is fighting extradition to Illinois.
Rittmanic, who lived in Kankakee, joined the Bradley Police Department in 2007 and was promoted to sergeant in 2014, said Lt. Philip Trudeau, a department spokesman. She previously spent seven years as a deputy with the Iroquois County Sheriff’s Department, he said.
Meanwhile, Illinois police are warning that scammers are creating fraudulent GoFundMe pages using Sgt. Rittmanic’s name.
“There have been several Go Fund Me fundraisers posted by supposed family members of Sgt Marlene Rittmanic. NONE of these are legit, and the family will NOT be creating any fundraising pages through Go Fund Me,” the department said on its Facebook page. “If you see a fundraising page for Sgt Marlene Rittmanic, you can report it to them as fraudulent, and if you’ve donated to one, please seek a refund.”
There is one legitimate GoFundMe page set up by the family of her critically injured partner, 27-year-old Bailey.
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