Three weeks after he was killed in a hit-and-run crash involving a drunken Chicago Police officer, Trenton Booker’s mother sadly glimpsed the empty chair that the always smiling 13-year-old was supposed to sit in for his eighth grade graduation. “Instead of me being able to take pictures like the other parents I stared at the chair he would have sat in, which was covered with his class T-shirt,” Barbara Norman said at Wednesday’s sentencing hearing for Richard Bolling, the veteran narcotics cop convicted in the deadly May 22, 2009, collision. “. . . .It was too fresh then for me …

Chicago School Board members Wednesday unanimously agreed to close or phase out seven flagging schools and to turn around a record 10 others, only to be greeted with cries of “Shame on you!” and “Rubber Stamp!’’ Although not every plan for every school was “perfect,’’ School Board Vice President Jesse Ruiz explained later, the vote marked an opportunity “to do something today for our children.” The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. declared that the closings disproportionately impacted African American communities.

Observing “Ash Wednesday” doesn’t always require physically stepping into a church. Pastors Christian Coon and Trey Hall of the Urban Village Church took to the streets and offered to smudge the foreheads of passers-by with ash, a Christian symbol of repentance to signify the beginning of Lent. “We want to go to the people rather than expect them to come to us,” Coon said. Church laypeople joined the pastors by carrying signs that asked “Got Ashes?” and handing out informational brochures about their church, which is a United Methodist Church. “Our mission is to reach out to folks who’ve been …

Illinois Appellate Court Judge Aurelia Pucinski bashed her successor Dorothy Brown Wednesday, saying the Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court’s office has turned the task of record-keeping into a jumbled mess. Incredulous, the Brown campaign fired back that they had to fix the chaos Pucinski left behind when she left office in 2000. Pucinski is endorsing Brown’s Democratic primary rival, Ald. Ricardo Munoz (22nd).

Chicago’s never-ending war on potholes may not be so never-ending after all. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration boasted Wednesday that it has eliminated the 9,000-pothole backlog the mayor inherited when he took office in mid-May and now is “keeping pace with daily” requests to fill potholes. That has undoubtedly been helped along by the unseasonably mild and relatively snow-free winter. But, it’s also a product of the city’s new and more strategic approach to pothole patching. The Chicago Department of Transportation is now using a new mapping technology to build “daily grid routes” that allow city crews to address “open calls …

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel endorsed former Veterans Administration official Tammy Duckworth Wednesday for a northwest suburban congressional seat. In 2006, when Emanuel spearheaded the Democrats’ effort to elect members of Congress, Duckworth’s was the race he probably worked hardest on, though she lost to Republican Peter Roskam. This time in a new district that includes much of that old district, Duckworth, an Iraqi War vet, faces former Deputy Illinois Treasurer Raja Krishnamoorthi in the March 20 Democratic primary election. “Tammy’s no stranger to fighting for her beliefs, no matter the risk,” Emanuel said in a news release. “She understands better …

A man with a history of sexual offenses was ordered held on $500,000 bond Wednesday on charges alleging he choked a Wicker Park flower shop employee into unconsciousness before stabbing her repeatedly.

Rep. Judy Biggert, R-Hinsdale, will not be able to waltz in as the Republican nominee for a new congressional district connecting Aurora and Joliet. Kane County Clerk Jack Cunningham has been ruled back on the ballot after earlier being thrown off because a dyslexic volunteer had transposed two numbers in an address on Cunningham’s signature forms. A court ruled Tuesday the error was harmless enough. “I have 30 days to try to win an election for Congress” against a better-known opponent, Cunningham conceded. And the legal challenge Biggert made to his candidacy “has taken quite a bit of money, quite …

Gov. Pat Quinn took his case for a budgetary crash diet directly to state lawmakers Wednesday, pushing a grim assortment of prison closures and spending cuts in a spending plan that he said was built around “hard realities.”

quinn’s  hit list Some of the state  facilities the governor has targeted for closure: Adult prisons ◆ Tamms Correctional Center ◆ Dwight Correctional Center Halfway houses ◆ Crossroads Chicago ◆ Westside, Chicago ◆ Fox Valley, Aurora ◆ Decatur ◆ Peoria ◆ Southern Illinois, Carbondale Department of Juvenile Justice Juvenile detention centers ◆ Illinois Youth Center, Joliet ◆ Illinois Youth Center, Murphysboro Department  of Children and Family Services ◆ Chicago office, 3518 W. Division ◆ Chicago office, 6201 S. Emerald ◆ Skokie Department of  Human Services (DHS) ◆ Plans call for closure of 24 small offices Downstate DHS Division of Developmental …

Jerry L. Hudson of Bolingbrook is on trial in DuPage County on charges he murdered his ex-wife, Melissa Bridgewater, outside an Oak Brook hotel on Jan. 1, 2010.

Chicago restaurants are not exactly chomping at the bit to participate in Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to shrink and revamp the Taste of Chicago. Only 40 restaurants applied to participate for the five-day festival, prompting the city to extend Tuesday’s deadline until Friday.

A South Side man was ordered held without bail Wednesday for shooting and injuring a Chicago Police officer over the weekend. Cortez Ross, 21, of the 4300 block of South Champlain, is facing attempted first-degree murder and aggravated battery charges. Prosecutors said at 4 p.m. Sunday, three officers were on patrol when they received a call of a man with a gun at 68th and Stony Island. When the officers arrived on the scene, they saw Ross and two others, assistant Cook County state’s attorney Sean O’Callaghan said. One of those in the group the officers observed yelled “police” and …

A federal judge in Cheyenne, Wyo., has rejected the federal government’s claim that it can’t be sued over the fatal bear mauling of a Park Ridge man near Yellowstone National Park.Erwin F. Evert — a 70-year-old botanist who had lived with his wife in a cabin nearby for part of the year for several decades — was killed by a 430-pound grizzly on June 17, 2010, in Shoshone National Forest, east of Yellowstone. The bear was recovering from tranquilizers administered by federal researchers. Evert’s widow, Yolanda Evert, has filed a $5 million wrongful-death suit against the government, asserting that researchers …

A vehicle plowed into a building in the Northwest Side Logan Square neighborhood early Wednesday after an intoxicated passenger apparently grabbed the wheel. The crash happened about 2 a.m. in the 2400 block of North Milwaukee Avenue, police News Affairs Officer Amina Greer said, citing preliminary reports. An intoxicated passenger in the vehicle grabbed the wheel, causing the vehicle to veer into the building, Greer said. Both people in the car were taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries. A homeless man standing nearby during the crash said the vehicle “nicked” him, and he was taken in …

Two people were hurt in an apparent wrong-way crash Wednesday morning on the outbound Kennedy Expressway.