Jamel Danzy, 29, from Hammond, Indiana, is charged with making the straw purchase there for someone here in Illinois who wasn't legally entitled to buy a gun. It was a gun that ended up in the back seat of a car on Saturday night. A picture from a Chicago police bodycam obtained by the I-Team shows a passenger not charged, who we are not identifying, and Officer Ella French on the other side of the window. She was shining a flashlight on driver Eric Morgan who is now facing felony charges.
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Moments later Officer French was mortally wounded with shots from that pistol, allegedly fired by Morgan's brother, Emonte, who faces first degree murder charges.
They were all in an SUV owned by Jamel Danzy, according to investigators. Danzy is the man who is accused of providing them with the gun. He allegedly bought the pistol last March and sold it to Emonte Morgan, because Morgan was ineligible to buy a gun on his own. Straw purchases as they are known are illegal.
Danzy is being held without bond at the MCC in downtown Chicago. He is charged with conspiracy to violate federal firearm laws and other gun violations and is scheduled for a detention hearing Wednesday afternoon in federal court.
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The Indiana-to-Illinois gun pipeline is a popular smuggling route investigated by the I-Team in recent years, with hundreds of illegal weapons coming across the border and eventually used in crimes.
ATF agents say Danzy has told them he also illegally bought a gun for a cousin who was a convicted felon.
The Justice Department has launched a crackdown on gun corridors such as the Indiana-to-Illinois pipeline. Just last month Attorney General Garland was here to announce the formation of federal gun strike forces in Chicago and four other cities, looking to interrupt raging street violence. Two weeks later, with a gun smuggled through our local corridor, one Chicago police officer is dead and a second critically wounded.