Brittany Hill’s family wants answers about how shooting video leaked

The 24-year-old shielded her daughter from the gunfire. Two men are being held without bail in the shooting.

James Hill didn’t want to be standing in front of Chicago police headquarters Thursday morning, but he and a dozen others were there all the same.

“I’m just a dad hurting,” he said, as a single tear — one that would be far from the last — streamed down his left cheek.

Hill, other family members, supporters and faith leaders were outside Chicago Police Department headquarters at 35^th Street and Michigan Avenue to announce that Brittany Hill’s family will pursue legal action against the city after video footage of her murder was leaked last week. No litigation has yet been filed, but the family’s attorney said that “we are pursuing a lawsuit of some sort.”

Brittany Hill, 24, was holding her 1-year-old daughter and talking with two men in the 1200 block of North Mason Avenue shortly before 9 a.m. on May 28. That’s when, authorities say, Michael Washington and Eric Adams pulled up in a Chevrolet Impala and opened fire on the group.

She was shot several times. In the leaked video, she can be seen hobbling behind a car while still holding her baby as two men continue to fire their guns.

“She made me proud because she gave her life in the same way I would’ve given mine,” her father said.

Rich Hein/Sun-Times

A passerby eventually took Brittany Hill to West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, where she was pronounced dead. She lived within a few blocks from where she was shot.

Neither her baby — who was at the news conference — nor the men she was with were wounded.

The apparent targets of the shooting are believed to be the people Brittany Hill was standing with, authorities said. Hill had been talking with her daughter’s 23-year-old father, who was seated in a parked car in the block, and with two other men, ages 19 and 26.

Washington and Adams were arrested in downstate Urbana just hours after the shooting. They were ordered held without bail.

Activist and former mayoral candidate Ja’Mal Green, who knew Brittany Hill, said there “was no reason for the video to be released at all,” especially given that police had already taken Washington and Adams into custody.

Green said Brittany Hill’s family first learned of the video as they were in church last Sunday.

Shortly after the leak, the CPD announced it would be conducting an investigation to learn how it got out.

“We need to see some real action,” Green said.

James Hill said Thursday that he forgave the two men accused of killing his daughter “because that’s who I raised her to be.”

Her father said that Brittany Hill, who also had a 7-year-old son, was the youngest of his seven children. She was in the final stages of getting a job with the Chicago Public Library, he said.

She was not the first child James Hill has lost. His oldest, another girl, died of SIDS.

The video of her death appears to slightly contradict the version of events set forth by prosecutors at the bond hearings for Washington and Adams.

Prosecutors said Washington, 39, fired from the front passenger seat of the Chevrolet Impala, but the video shows two men standing outside of the vehicle when they open fire.

Rich Hein/Sun-Times