CENTREVILLE -- The full effect of Lt. Greg Jonas' death while patrolling in the Ernest Smith Apartments complex early Tuesday morning has not fully sunk in for his devastated family.
His mother, Vivian Whigham, and daughter, Kalidah Jonas-Carraway, struggled through tears Wednesday to describe the gentle man who loved yard work and hosted family cookouts where his melt-in-your-mouth barbecue had become a tradition.
Sitting on her grandmother's sofa, Kalidah Jonas-Carraway clung to a photograph from her wedding, March 24, 2007. Dressed in white, she is being escorted down the aisle by her father.
"If I could have that chance once again to dance with my father, I'd be so happy," she said, crying. "My father is my hero. I love my father."
Whigham, 77, paused several times as she discussed the close relationship she and her son shared. Jonas, 59, worked midnight to 8 a.m.
"He loved that shift," she said. Every morning, when his shift ended, he would call or stop by her apartment at 8:30, she said.
Wednesday morning was rough, she said. "A friend of mine came by at 8:30 a.m. If she hadn't been here, I don't know what I would've done," Whigham said.
"He was a good person," she said. "He wasn't the kind of brow-beating policeman. He did his job, and he helped a lot of those young people. He was always talking to them, telling them to do the right things. I don't understand how someone could just take his life like they did."
The veteran Centreville policeman was fatally shot in the back of the head about 2 a.m. Tuesday after he got out of his police cruiser to identify some subjects who were walking in the apartment complex on 47th Street at Tudor Avenue. Residents of the Ernest Smith Apartments, who said Jonas was well-known and respected, left flowers, teddy bears and cards in a large make-shift memorial there Wednesday.
Jonas-Carraway learned of her father's death after getting a call about 2:30 a.m. Tuesday from her maternal grandmother, who told her something had happened to her father at the apartment complex.
Jonas-Carraway rushed to the scene, where she was met with more than 20 police cars from various agencies. She spotted an Illinois State Police trooper and asked him if she should prepare herself.
"He told me yes and said I should wait where I was standing," she said. "He walked away, and I ran to where I saw my father's car. The door to his car was open and I looked down and saw the blood from my father on the ground. My father wasn't there," she said.
Whigham said her daughter-in-law, Viola Jonas, was breaking the news to her by telephone about the shooting at the same time Kalidah Jonas-Carraway arrived at her home and was coming through her door to tell her what had happened. "I started grabbing clothes and rushing out to the hospital with my granddaughter," she said.
At the hospital, Whigham was not immediately allowed to see her son. St. Clair County Coroner Rick Stone stopped her and took her to where she could sit down. Jonas-Carraway went into the room and saw her father's body and told Whigham she shouldn't go back there to see him. Whigham didn't go back to where her son lay still on the hospital table, gunned down in the complex where he had tried to make a difference.
Whigham had never really wanted her son to be a police officer, but he had told her he'd rather be a police officer than carry a gun to the classroom where he would have been a teacher, she said.
In the three decades Jonas was a police officer, Whigham said, there were times her phone rang and she wondered aloud, "Lord what has done happened?"
His untimely death is devastating to Whigham, and even more so for his wife, Whigham said. "They were inseparable."
Jonas loved basketball and running. And, he was a very good cook.
"He could cook some good greens -- collards or mixed, Greg could season them real good," Whigham said. She bragged on her son's barbecue, too and said she ate some on Memorial Day.
"Every holiday, I would go with him to his house, and he and his wife and I and the grandchildren would spend a full day together," she said.
Jonas was a family man and spent lots of time at home in his yard doing yard work and things around the house.
Jonas-Carraway said she never thought such a thing could happen to her father even though she knew his job was dangerous.
"I never thought anyone would take a life like that -- my father's life. He was well loved by everybody," she said.
She said she doesn't want another family to experience what her family is experiencing and the responsible individuals, if allowed to walk the streets again, can kill again. She thanked police for their investigation, and the community for coming forward to help the police.
Funeral arrangements are pending, Whigham said. Nash Funeral Home in East St. Louis has Jonas' body.
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