Continuing the Archdiocese of Chicago’s efforts to battle gun violence, Cardinal Blase Cupich has appointed the veteran FBI agent Philip Andrew to a newly created position of director of violence prevention.
Andrew served as an FBI agent for 21 years in New York, Kansas City and, most recently, Chicago. Before joining the FBI, Andrew was the executive director for the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence.
But it was as a 20-year-old in 1988, in a notorious, highly charged case, that he became acutely aware of the toll of gun violence.
Then a student at the University of Illinois, he was in his family’s home in Winnetka when Laurie Dann, a mentally ill woman, burst into their kitchen brandishing a gun and took Andrew and his parents hostage. Andrew grabbed the gun after she put it down, removed the clip to win her trust, and persuaded her to let his parents go. Later, though, after police arrived, Andrew was shot in the chest before she killed herself.
It was the culmination of a violent rampage in which Dann had set fire to a house, tried to firebomb Ravinia School in Highland Park and opened fire on children at Hubbard Woods School in Winnetka, killing 8-year-old Nick Corwin and injuring five other children.
In his new role, Andrew will direct the archdiocese’s anti-violence initiatives which will include coalition-building efforts, a greater visibility in distressed neighborhoods and developing programs to help reduce violence and poverty.
“He has known firsthand the impact of violence as a shooting victim and will help build bridges as we collaborate with people of good will to strengthen a culture of peace across the Chicago area,” the archdiocese said in a statement released Thursday.
The position is part of Cupich’s campaign against gun violence across the area. Last April, he pledged $250,000 to support grass-roots anti-violence initiatives, and in September he banned guns in all church properties.
