Starting out as an invitation to a great party on Chicago’s hot music scene at the EnVent West Loop venue turned into an opportunity to take a closer look at the new KIA Soul vehicle and The Soul Collective. The KIA Soul urban passenger vehicle was designed by Mike Torpey, who found inspiration for the vehicle …

Paul M. Banks a.k.a. The Sports Bank, NBC Chicago Street Team If you’ve ever seen University of Illinois Men’s basketball Head Coach Bruce Weber on television, you might notice what a happy-go-lucky guy he appears to be. In person, he’s just the nicest guy you’ll ever meet. One might even …

Glenn Murray, NBC Chicago Street Team While I sit here in Orlando (ready to go cheer for the Lakers to beat the Magic) my mind is actually on the busy weekend coming up in Chicago. So here are a few of my prime choices ranging from cultural, to culinary and even …

by April Lawson What’s the best way to commoditize rappers like Lil Wayne’s mean mugs? On 2.oz squares of semi sweet or dark chocolate, of course. Queens New York native Tahir Hemphill of StapleCrops.com brings food to his creative enterprise with a line of rap chocolates. They are an extension of Staple Crops’ …

Theresa Carter, The Local Tourist, NBC Chicago Street Team If you’ve got kids in Chicago it would be an absolute tragedy to let them subsist on grilled cheese and chicken fingers, but expanding their culinary tastes can be rather expensive! For one week this month, though, you can take the tykes …

Candace Jordan, NBC Chicago Street Team I woke up Thursday morning, May 28th, to the most unusual emails.  “You’ve got to do it!”, “You’re our choice.”, “Email them now!”, “You’d be perfect for this!”….blah, blah, blah….only until I opened up the newspaper did I understand what they were talking about.  There …

A 22-year-old South Side man was ordered held on $300,000 bond today in connection with the theft of a 9 mm Beretta from a Chicago police officer who lay critically injured following a traffic crash Wednesday, authorities said. Rasaan Shannon, of the 9800 block of South Morgan Street, was charged with strong arm robbery, disarming a peace officer and unlawful use of a weapon by a felon, police said. Cook County Criminal Court Judge Donald Panarese ordered him held on $300,000 bond in a hearing today, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office said. Officer Densey Cole II, who Police Supt. Jody Weis said today is in a medically induced coma, was unconscious in his police SUV after the accident at 98th and Halsted Streets, officials said. The crash, in which four other people also were hurt, happened about 11:45 a.m. Wednesday. Cole is a 16-year veteran of the police force. Today, Weis said the quick work of law enforcement officers, including the victim, helped to catch the suspect. Weis credited Cole with being able to help police, calling for backup even though he was lapsing into unconsciousness and thus getting police involved right away despite his injuries. “If this person would do this to a man in uniform, just think what he would do to an average person,” Weis said. The officer’s gun has been found, Weis said. Cole, who was responding to a call when the crash happened, was taken in critical condition to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, said Quention Curtis, a spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department. He is still being treated there. An older man and woman also were taken to Advocate Christ, and two teenagers were taken to Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park with non-life-threatening injuries, police said. On Thursday, Cole’s family issued a news release through the Police Department, thanking police officers and other Chicagoans for their support, but asking that their privacy be respected. — Vikki Ortiz , Liam Ford

The hijacked school bus after it was stopped in south suburban Glenwood (Zbigniew Bzdak/ChicagoTribune) A driver who made “threats to other employees” and hijacked a school bus with one other employee aboard in south suburban South Holland was shot and killed in Glenwood after he aimed the speeding bus at police trying to stop him, police said.  SEE MORE PHOTOS   The driver was accelerating at officers standing in front of the bus when he was shot by a South Holland police officer near the intersection of Main Street and Glenwood-Chicago Heights Road, said South Holland Police Chief Warren Millsaps in a press conference at the scene of the shooting early this afternoon. The driver had ignored repeated police orders to exit the bus, Millsaps said. Early reports indicated the bus driver may have fired a weapon, but Millsaps would not say if the man had a gun. “Anytime you have a bus that’s fleeing from police, at 65 or so miles an hour, it’s a deadly weapon,” Millsaps said. “And anytime you point that bus at an officer and drive it toward an officer or a civilian or anyone else, it’s a deadly weapon, and the officer is using the appropriate force necessary to terminate his actions.” The shooting followed a 10-minute police chase during which “numerous” police and civilian cars were hit by the bus, police said. The school bus was not carrying any children but a monitor was on board and she was not hurt, Millsaps and a bus company spokeswoman said. During the chase, the bus hit three squad cars and two or three civilian vehicles, Millsaps said. Two officers were injured, not seriously, but none of the occupants of the civilian vehicles were hurt, he said. The incident began around 7:22 a.m. at the First Student, Inc., bus barn at 169th and State streets in South Holland, police said. A disgruntled driver for the bus company showed up for work with “attitude issues” with a manager and was told he would not be allowed to drive today, the bus company said. The bus normally carries special needs students for a consortium of south suburban school districts and was operated by First Student Inc., a Cincinnati-based company. The driver took off, trying to run over bus company employees when they attempted to stop him, Millsaps said. Employees then called police and told them that the driver was “acting erractically,” Millsaps said. The bus company said it called police and also notified parents not to let their children board the bus should it stop to pick them up. When police arrived on the scene, they notified neighboring suburbs’ police departments to be on the lookout for the bus driver, Millsaps said in a later press release. Soon after, Riverdale police stopped the bus at Sibley Boulevard and State Street, Millsaps said. Officers ordered the driver out of the bus, but he refused and sped off, trying to hit a Riverdale police officer, Millsaps said in the release. Riverdale police gave chase and were joined by South Holland and Glenwood officers after the driver went south, Millsaps said. During the chase the bus driver struck “numerous” cars and police cars, he said. Millsaps had earlier said about five vehicles were struck. The 7-mile chase, in which the driver reached speeds of up to 70 mph, ended about 40 minutes after the driver took the bus, police said. The driver hit more police and civilian vehicles, then when the bus encountered a construction zone and police were able to get out of their vehicles and surround the bus to try to stop it, Millsaps said. When he was stuck in the construction zone, the driver had been headed south and turning from North Main Street in Glenwood onto an extension of Main Street also known as Glenwood-Lansing Road, Millsaps said. A Glenwood officer, among others, repeatedly ordered him to get out of the car, and when the driver instead accelerated, a South Holland officer fired twice, hitting the driver, Millsaps said. The bus then veered into a nearby home’s driveway and crashed into the house, Millsaps said. Officers then took the man off the bus and tried to save his life, Millsaps said. The officer used “the appropriate force necessary” in response to the driver using the bus as a deadly weapon, Millsaps said. The owner of a nearby restaurant was on the roof around 8:30 a.m. when he heard brakes squeal and saw a bus swerve into a residential driveway on Main Street near Glenwood-Chicago Heights Road. The bus almost hit the home, and he heard two or three shots. As the witness moved to a different part of the roof, he said about 9 or 10 police cars arrived. He heard several more shots and saw members of a road construction crew running away, he said. At Dennis Glenwood Marathon just north of where the bus crashed, employee Darren DeMario, 25, was in one of the car bays working “when a bus went by, then about 20 squads.” DeMario stepped out of the station to get a look and was a police officer as he “fired five shots. He fired through the driver’s window. I was pretty amazed. This was not something I expected to see at work.” The man who took the bus had been a driver for the company since March and drove off this morning from the company’s South Holland bus yard after an argument with a manager, company spokeswoman Nicol Jones said. She believed the police chase started in Riverdale. There were no children on board, but a female monitor was on the bus, Jones said. The monitor was not injured but was reported shaken up taken to a local hospital for observation, Jones said. The driver had cleared criminal and other background checks, Jones said. State police were investigating the shooting because it was police-involved, Millsaps said. — Dennis Sullivan , Staff Report