Detective Jerome A. Stubig

Jerome A. Stubig

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

Detective Stubig and Sergeant Schaffer 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 S. Exchange.

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

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

The assailant 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 home made bomb in a department store that killed a woman and injured several more shoppers. A week later one of his bombs went off in a railroad yard killing a man. The suspect was adjudged insane and sent to Chester Mental Hospital, in Menard.

Detective Stubig was a signal lineman in the Army during the Korean War; He is survived by his wife, three sons and three daughters.