Sergeant James R. Schaffer

James R. Schaffer

Sergeant James Schaffer and Detective Jerome A. Stubig were killed near the beginning of a rampage by a berserk gunman.

Sergeant Schaffer and Detective Stubig were the first to arrive at the scene where two fellow officers had been shot. Six policemen and two civilians were also injured in the six-hour gun battle between a former marine, and hundreds of heavily armed police at 9521 South Exchange Avenue.

The explosion from a bomb thrown at the two officers by the suspect first injured both men. As they laid injured, the suspect emptied his carbine into both men, killing them.

The incident began when two detectives knocked on the suspect’s door and announced they were police officers. They were there to investigate a series of bombings. He answered the knock with gunfire.

The suspect surrendered to Police Superintendent James Rochford at 9:00 p.m. that evening. The bomb squad defused 40 bombs in his home.

Two weeks earlier the 43-year-old suspect set off a bomb in a department store killing a woman and injuring several more shoppers. A week later a bomb exploded in a railroad yard killing a man. The suspect was adjudged insane and sent to Chester Mental Hospital in Menard.

Sergeant Schaffer was U.S. Army veteran of WWII. His wife and daughter survive him.