CRIME: Parking Problem

David Looby sat on the veranda of his brown, one-story frame house on a humid Chicago night last week, and listened bitterly to a murmur of voices on the porch of Neighbor Mark Deady across the street. David Looby, 53, is an ordinary citizen, a stocky municipal electrical foreman who earns $650 a month and goes regularly to Sunday Mass at St. Margaret of Scotland Roman Catholic Church. But he nursed an extraordinary hatred for a clerk named Ralph Adams who had been courting 35-year-old Mary Deady for five years. Reason: Ralph Adams was in the habit of parking his automobile in front of Looby’s house.

Looby had no garage and felt that he had a right to reserve the curb space in front of his home for himself. A series of quarrels with Adams had turned Looby’s concern over his parking rights into an obsession, and now, in the glow of the street light, he saw the familiar and maddening shape of the clerk’s automobile before his house again. When Adams finally left the Deady porch, Looby could not contain himself. He ran down into the street muttering wildly: “Parking in front of my home—” In seconds, the two men were swinging at each other.

Mary Deady’s brothers broke up the fight and led Adams back to their house again. But five minutes later Looby was out on the street calling, “Come over here, you!” Adams came—with Mary Deady clinging to his arm. Looby aimed a .25 caliber pistol at him and fired twice. Adams dropped, moaning, “Oh, no. Oh, no.” Mary Deady began praying beside him. Ralph Adams was dead in minutes.

At the inquest Looby sat with bowed head and listened to Spinster Deady’s trembling voice again. “Ralph was shot down like a dog because he parked his car,” she cried. “You ruined my life when you shot down the man I loved. He didn’t even have a chance to say, ‘My God, forgive my sins.’ ” David Looby was charged with murder.