Missing file in Koschman case says Daley nephew was aggressive

Updated: September 12, 2011 6:51AM

For seven years, the Chicago Police Department has portrayed David Koschman as the aggressor in the drunken confrontation on Division Street that ended when a nephew of then-Mayor Richard M. Daley knocked him out with a punch that left Koschman with brain injuries from which he would die 11 days later.

Now, a police report from 2004 that was never made public — and which the police say they only recently “discovered” — says a witness told the police that Daley nephew Richard J. “R.J” Vanecko had been acting in a “very aggressive” manner toward Koschman in the moments before the punch.

The statement — which is scratched out but still visible — is the first official indication that the police were told anything that contradicted their conclusion that the 5-foot-6, 140-pound Koschman was the aggressor in the confrontation that began when he and a group of his friends, in from Mount Prospect for a night out on Rush Street, encountered the 6-foot-3, 230-pound Vanecko and a group of his friends on Division Street near Dearborn in the early-morning hours of April 25, 2004.

Missing file in Koschman case says Daley nephew was aggressive