Cook County Prosecutors KIM FOXX Declined Felony Charges In Schaumburg Stabbing, West Side Shootout, Citing ‘Mutual Combat’.

According to Chicago 5 News, Published October 4, 2021 • Updated on October 5, 2021 at 12:23 pm:

“Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx fired back Monday night at Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot who hours earlier blasted the prosecutor’s decision not to charge five men who police linked to a deadly gang shootout in Austin.

Chicago police sought to charge all five suspects with murder and aggravated battery in connection with last week’s mid-morning gunfight that left one shooter dead and two of the suspects wounded. But by Sunday morning, a Chicago police spokeswoman acknowledged the suspects had “been released without charges.”

Members of a gang faction started to shoot into a residence in an effort to lure out or injure members of a rival gang, according to city officials. Uniformed officers in a marked police vehicle witnessed “much of the activity,” and it’s believed the incident was captured on officer body-worn camera.

Foxx’s office explained that prosecutors had “determined that the evidence was insufficient to meet our burden of proof to approve felony charges,” a spokeswoman said, adding that police officials agreed with the decision.

A police report framed the decision to decline charges in a different light than what prosecutors initially said: “Mutual combatants was cited as the reason for the rejection.” Mutual combat is a legal term used to define a fight or struggle that two parties willingly engage in.

Lightfoot and five Chicago aldermen wrote a letter to Foxx Monday, in which they voiced disagreement with the assessment, saying “the individuals who initiated the gunfire are not ‘mutual combatants and ‘certainly were not firing in self-defense.””