In the early morning hours of May 30th, 2002, Lee Charles Bell, a 33 year old black Rockford resident was in the area of 7th street.
Rockford police officers pulled up in a stop and frisk manner. They cuffed Lee on an attempted obstruction of justice charge.
In a lawsuit filed by the family of Lee, they claimed he was working as an undercover drug buyer at the time of the incident. He had also told his family that he was going to testify against a Rockford police officer in court.
Rockford police officer Jeff Koehn, who cuffed Lee, alleged Lee asked to sit down. Koehn told Lee to sit on curb and that without any prompt, Lee fell straight back hitting his head on the sidewalk.
An independent autopsy ruled the manner in which Lee’s skull was fractured was consistent with being shoved to the ground.
Lee died at Swedish American Hospital.
At the time Lee had six children, one Lamar Bell, who died in Illinois State Police custody in June of 2023.
This was the first and only Rockford police deadly force incident in 2002 and fourth in the 2000’s.