What to know
- Chicago Police Officer Krystal Rivera was shot and killed during a foot pursuit that led to an armed confrontation inside a Chatham neighborhood apartment.
- Two suspects fled the scene but were later apprehended, and three firearms were recovered.
- Rivera, a four-year veteran of the agency and a mother, was rushed to the hospital by a cruiser that crashed after a malfunction, and another squad car was needed to finish the journey.
By William Lee and Caroline Kubzansky
Source Chicago Tribune
A Chicago police officer was shot and killed during an armed confrontation in a Chatham apartment Thursday night, authorities said.
The officer, part of a tactical team in the Gresham (6th) District, was trying to conduct an investigatory stop on a person believed to have a weapon around 9:50 p.m. near the intersection of East 82nd Street and South Drexel Avenue, police Superintendent Larry Snelling said. The person the team was trying to stop started to run away, he said, leading to a foot chase that ended inside an apartment.
There, Snelling said, the team encountered a second person armed with a rifle. One of the officers fired a gun “at some point” during the confrontation, he said, and a second officer was shot. She later died of her injuries at University of Chicago Medical Center, Snelling said. A third officer hurt his wrist and was listed in fair condition, according to a CPD statement released around 4 a.m. Friday.
The Cook County medical examiner’s office identified the slain officer as 36-year-old Krystal Rivera, who lived in the Irving Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side.
The two people in the apartment fled and were arrested shortly afterward, he said, though officials had “several” people in custody in connection with the shooting. Investigators recovered three weapons at the scene and were still reviewing body-worn camera footage, he said, and the Civilian Office of Police Accountability was investigating the shooting.
Other officers took their wounded colleague to the hospital in a squad car, which crashed and caught fire on the way there due to what Snelling described as a malfunction with the vehicle. Another squad car finished the trip, he said, and the officers in the first car were “doing fine.”
Snelling addressed media early Friday morning outside the hospital, surrounded by other department brass, Mayor Brandon Johnson and other city and state officials. He didn’t name the slain officer, but described her as young, vibrant and a hard worker who was a valued member of her team. She had been a police officer for four years, he said, and had children.
“The way that she worked, it was evident that she did love her job,” he said. “She wanted to make Chicago a better place.”
Outside the hospital, squad cars lined Cottage Grove Avenue for blocks in every direction. A peer support officer walked people, some of them in tears, in and out of the ambulance bay as others in uniform exchanged hugs in the street.
In Chatham, the crime scene spanned multiple blocks as law enforcement agencies fanned out in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
Cook County sheriff’s deputies walked up and down Maryland Avenue near East 83rd Street with rifles and canine units while tactical teams searched nearby alleys with flashlights.
As squad cars lined the streets for several blocks in every direction,a police helicopter circled the area, beaming a searchlight. Residents walked their dogs and filmed the scene on their phones, protesting when officers asked them to back up to Cottage Grove Avenue so they could expand the crime scene.
Officers appeared to zero in on an alley on the west side of South Ingleside Avenue. A resident leaned out the window of a courtyard building across the street and asked if they needed to get in. Detectives begin combing the front yard with flashlights.
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