Concluding Confessions

Herald-News reporter Felix Sarver was able to bring a little bit of closure to those of us wondering what truly happened in the 32 seconds of mystery that I wrote about here. The body cam footage that was finally released did indeed prove that in the span of about 30 seconds, a big mistake had been made. Within those 30 seconds, Jabbar was instructed 11 times (by the deputies) to put his weapon down, and as he had bent over to seemingly do so, deputy Binnendyk fired his gun as Jabbar Muhammad lunged at Eldred Wells. 

Sarver wrote about how the Freedom of Information Act requests had finally produced newly released records from the Will County sheriff’s. The report “determined the death of Eldred Wells was primarily from those gunshot wounds, with stab wounds as a contributing factor.”

As of today, it has been 1 year and 23 days since the deaths of Jabbar Muhammad (age 21) and his grandfather, Eldred Wells (age 70). On November 6, 2021, the grandson had been pronounced dead on arrival while Eldred was rushed to the local hospital where he died due to the severity of his injuries. The police department’s original narrative was that Eldred’s cause of death was a stab wound to the neck from his grandson. In contrast, the family received paramedic reports that depicted a different, more gruesome scene. Savini and Assad wrote that one of the reports had stated that “when paramedics arrived, officers found Jabbar and Eldred ‘laying on the ground in a pool of blood, with two officers doing compressions on both patients.’” It was not until one month after the incident that the truth came out; in reality, Eldred’s two gunshot wounds had caused more irreversible damage than the slash in his neck. 

As reported by Savini and Assad, “deputies can be heard shouting in the dispatch audio: ‘County, shots fired, shots fired!’ before stating that multiple ambulances were needed for one stab victim and one gunshot victim.”