Will County sheriff’s lieutenant fired after internal investigation of fatal shooting

A Will County sheriff’s lieutenant who avoided charges over the fatal shooting of a hostage taker who surrendered to police has been fired following an internal investigation of the incident.

Sheriff’s Lt. John Allen was the subject of an investigation conducted by a retired law enforcement officer over the fatal 2022 shooting of Gregory Walker, 65, of Crest Hill.

Earlier this year, a $2.7 million settlement was reached between Will County and Walker’s family in a federal lawsuit case regarding the shooting.

In a statement on Thursday, sheriff’s office spokesman Kevin Hedemark said that following an “internal investigation conducted by an independent third party,” the sheriff’s office has “terminated the employment” of Allen “in connection with” the 2022 incident.

Walker was armed with a revolver on May 10, 2022, when he took hostages at Fifth-Third Bank in Romeoville.

The hostages were eventually released unharmed, and Walker disarmed himself and surrendered to the police, according to a video that eventually was released by the Illinois State Police on Jan. 27, 2025. The state police agency had investigated Walker’s shooting.

At one point in the video, Walker is on his knees with his hands behind his head.

As Walker was preparing to exit the bank, Allen shot him in the chest with a rifle. Allen was part of the county’s SWAT team that responded to the incident.

The decision on whether Allen would face charges was placed in the hands of a special grand jury. The panel considered evidence presented by Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow’s office.

The grand jury ultimately decided Allen would not face charges.

Following Walker’s shooting, Will County Sheriff’s Deputy Chief Dan Jungles said the president of the union representing Allen reported the shooting occurred “as a result of a weapons malfunction.”

But the rifle functioned normally with no issues, according to testing done by the FBI in 2022 and a Kentucky company called Nth-Level in 2023.

The FBI report made no mention of the shooting supposedly occurring because of a sympathetic, or involuntary, trigger pull.

But that issue was raised as a possibility in a report from Nth-Level, which was solicited by Glasgow’s office to conduct further testing of the rifle.

The report suggested that Allen’s effort to close the bolt with one hand could have caused the other hand to “sympathetically contract and pull the trigger.”