Citing a cover-up by police and prosecutors, the mother of David Koschman says she will sue in federal court over a violation of civil rights. Political editor Carol Marin has this NBC 5 Investigates and Sun Times exclusive.
Citing a cover up by police and prosecutors the mother of David Koschman says she will sue in federal court over a violation of civil rights. Nanci Koschman disclosed her plans during an exclusive NBC5-Chicago Sun-Times interview.
Some details are still not known but Koschman said she will sue to quote, “set the record straight.”
“I’m taking aim at everybody who didn’t value David’s life enough and decided to cover it up and I guess now if somebody came up to me and said was it a cover up I could actually answer yes,” she said.
Koschman said she will take her case to federal court because Chicago police and Cook County prosecutors made a mockery of the criminal justice system. “They hid files, they destroyed files, they changed files,” she said of the two investigations they conducted into the death of her son.
David Koschman, 21, died in the spring of 2004 following an early morning argument outside the bars on Division Street.
This February, nearly 10 years after the fact, R.J. Vanecko, the nephew of former mayor Richard M. Daley, plead guilty to throwing the single punch that killed Koschman. He has less than a month to serve on his 60-day sentence after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
In 2004 police and prosecutors said Koschman was to blame. After a 2011 re-investigation, the case was closed.
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Nanci Koschman then asked a special prosecutor. Judge Michael Toomin appointed Dan Webb and after an 8-month investigation Vanecko was charged in December of 2012.
It has been just over six weeks since Webb issued a final 162-page report that Koschman says she has read four or five times.
“There were things in there (in which) I had no clue,” she said.
She says authorities told her, “that the case was closed, nothing I could do, go home, have a great life, see you around,” adding now, “this brought out a real hard side for me that they didn’t value David’s life. They just thought he wasn’t worth the fight. And I didn’t know how to fight.”
From the beginning Nanci Koschman said she was not motivated by money and reiterated that in our interview.
And said she hopes to set up a scholarship, should she prevail in court, in her son’s memory at Prospect High School in Mount Prospect.
“It’s just been nothing but lies to me and that’s why I’m doing this now,” she said. “Because I didn’t deserve to be lied to, David deserved to be treated as a person and you know I’m still advocating for him.”
She says she plans to visit her son’s grave and tell him: “I’m still fighting for you honey, I’m not letting them get away with this.”
