Contributed by The 411 News
An account of events by the brother of the nurse who was in the Community Hospital room
Funeral services were held Friday morning, June 26 for Ryan Askew at Family Christian Center in Munster. It was the first of two funerals held by families whose worlds were shattered recently at Munster’s Community Hospital.
Askew, a security officer and retired commander of the Lake County Sheriff Dept., was on duty at Community Hospital when he and a fellow security officer were called to a patient’s room early in the morning on June 16.
During a struggle with the patient, both Askew and the patient were shot and killed by the second officer.
The patient was 22-year-old Jamal Williams, a Lansing resident who had been admitted to the hospital only a few hours earlier. Williams’ family said he had been brought to the hospital suffering from depression.
Services for Williams were held on June 27 at Anointed Word Ministries Church, in Tinley Park, Illinois.
According to the Post Tribune, the Munster Police were dispatched to the hospital at 1:15am on June 16, responding to a physical disturbance between a patient and hospital staff. When Munster Police arrived, they found Askew and Williams deceased.
The day before Askew’s funeral, family members and friends of Williams gathered in the park near Community Hospital for a rally. In mourning, they remembered Jamal as nonviolent and caring and he recently began experiencing anxiety and depression.
In protest, marchers asked for ‘Justice for Jamal.‘ They were protesting Community Hospital’s reaction in sending security officers to resolve an incident the family believes should have been handled by medical staff.
A sequence of the events leading up to the shootings and deaths has not been made public by the hospital or police officials.
The nurse who was in the hospital room with both security officers and Williams told her brother what happened, and he posted the video, “Response to fatal shooting in Munster in a community hospital!”
