Video Shows Fatal Shooting of Chicago Police Officer by Partner as Probe Continues

By Sam Charles, Madeline Buckley and Gregory Royal Pratt

Source Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO—The city of Chicago on Friday released long-awaited body camera videos showing the controversial death of Officer Krystal Rivera, the tactical officer fatally shot last year by her partner in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood.

The footage published by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability begins showing Rivera and her partner, Carlos Baker, chasing a suspect into an apartment building. The foot pursuit lasted only seconds, but the videos show Baker took about two minutes to render aid to his partner after firing the fatal round.

In the tense situation that unfolded on the cameras, Rivera ran toward the entrance to the building and yelled, “Let me see your hands!” as she tried to gain access. “Let me see your (expletive) hands, bro!” Baker yelled.

Rivera and Baker were quickly buzzed inside, and the two rushed up a flight of stairs after the suspect, the videos show. As the suspect entered a unit, Baker followed close behind, with Rivera behind him. Baker can be seen kicking the door, and a man toppled over a couch inside.

What happened next promises to be at the crux of a lawsuit filed over the incident. Baker pivoted to his right, according to the video from his camera, which was aimed toward the wall outside the unit. A gunshot fired by him can be heard. Rivera, not yet in the doorway, is struck and falls in the hallway outside the unit.

The Cook County medical examiner’s office found that the fatal shot pierced Rivera’s skin near her left armpit and traveled through both her lungs, wedging itself in her ribs, autopsy records show.

Baker immediately radioed to dispatchers, “Shots fired at the police!”

Baker retreated up another flight of stairs and called out to Rivera, who was on the floor below his perch.

“Krystal, you good?” Baker asked, with no response.

He continued to call for help.

“Need an ambulance now, I can’t get to my partner,” Baker yelled into his radio on one video. “Squad, my partner is hit, my partner is hit. Get me an ambulance now!”

According to surveillance video taken from inside the residence, two people in the room closest to the front door had retreated to a back room as the officers approached. Seconds later, a man ran into the apartment and fell over the couch. One of the residents of the apartment can be seen returning and appeared to point a gun before the two ran away into a different room.

As scores of police officers headed for the scene, Baker remained sitting on the stairs for about two minutes catching his breath, his body-worn camera footage shows.

Rivera’s own camera shows she never arrived at the apartment door and apparently was in the hallway leading to it when she was struck. The released footage stops just after she was shot.

Baker asked another resident of the building to call 9-1-1, and he then went back down to the second floor, where Rivera was lying face-up on the floor with blood pooling under her.

Baker, still by himself, grabbed Rivera’s bulletproof vest and dragged her to the first-floor lobby, where he was met by other responding CPD officers. He urged them to take her to UChicago Medicine.

“Get her in the car now!” he yelled.

The squad car transporting Rivera crashed and caught fire on the way to the hospital, and Rivera was put into a different police vehicle to finish the trip to the hospital, CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling previously said.

Rivera, a four-year CPD veteran with a young daughter, was killed after her tactical team responded to a report of a person with a gun around 9:50 p.m. on June 5, 2025 in the 8200 block of South Drexel Avenue. Less than a year earlier, another CPD officer, Enrique Martinez, was shot and killed during an attempted traffic stop about a half-mile away.

Late last year Rivera’s family filed a nine-count lawsuit against Baker, the city and CPD, alleging willful and wanton conduct, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for early June, court records show. A representative for Rivera’s family didn’t respond to a request for comment on the videos’ release.

“Every day is painful as we continue to grieve the loss of my daughter, Krystal,” Rivera’s mother, Yolanda Rivera, said at a news conference last year. “Her child, her sisters, our family, (and) an entire community miss her deeply.

“From this moment forward, my purpose is simple: that those responsible for her death must be held accountable.”

Rivera’s family has alleged that she and Baker were previously in a romantic relationship, but Rivera broke things off shortly before she was shot.

In early 2025, Rivera learned that Baker was dating another woman whom he was also residing with, her family has alleged. Rivera, at that point unaware of Baker’s other relationship, told him that she planned to speak with the other woman. Baker tried to dissuade her, and Rivera ended the relationship in late May 2025, according to court filings.

On June 4, Baker “show(ed) up uninvited” at Rivera’s home after she told him to stay away. The following day, Baker fatally shot her. Rivera’s family’s attorneys noted, too, that in the months before her death, Rivera “told her supervisors that Carlos Baker was reckless” and requested that she be reassigned with a new partner.

Attorneys for Rivera’s family said Baker was profoundly unfit to be a police officer, as demonstrated by the 11 misconduct complaints in which he was a subject in the years before he shot and killed Rivera.

“He never should have been a Chicago police officer. He never should have got past his probationary period. He was not fit to police our communities, let alone carry a gun under the color of law,” attorney Antonio Romanucci has said.

In December, Romanucci said Rivera was in a tactical position, standing behind Baker, when she was shot. He did not explain how Rivera was shot from behind, but said “somehow he managed to shoot her on a 180-degree angle.”

In a statement to The Chicago Tribune, a representative for CPD said: “Our hearts remain with fallen Officer Krystal Rivera’s family. These videos are difficult to watch, and we remind members of the public that there is an active Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) investigation, which CPD continues to cooperate with. Due to this active investigation, we have no further comment.”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

About two months after the shooting, Baker was stripped of his police powers while COPA opened another investigation after Baker allegedly injured another female CPD officer at a bar in Wicker Park.

In a statement previously provided to the Tribune, Baker’s attorney, Tim Grace, expressed grief and sympathy to Rivera’s family but placed blame for her death on the suspect they were chasing. Further, Grace said the then-unreleased CPD body-camera footage refutes the claims by Rivera’s family.

“The facts are clear that Officer Baker breached the door on that fateful night and was facing the lethal end of a rifle,” Grace said. “While moving to seek cover and unbeknownst to him, his weapon unintentionally discharged striking Krystal.

“The height of both officers, their location, the angle of the service weapon and the exact positioning of both officers created a unique, dynamic and deadly circumstance that could not be duplicated in a controlled environment, not to mention the actual situation they were confronted with,” Grace added. “The true facts will reveal that Carlos immediately called for EMS, carried Krystal to safety and ensured she was being transported to the hospital. He then reentered the apartment to apprehend the offenders. The body worn camera videos will support these facts and challenge the accuracy and veracity of the allegations made in the complaint.”

Although two men now face an array of weapons and narcotics charges in connection with the shooting, neither faces a count of murder in her death. The two, Adrian Rucker and Jaylin Arnold, remain in Cook County Jail as their cases remain pending.

Representatives for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and attorneys for Rucker and Arnold declined to comment on the release of the footage.

In March, a panel of Illinois Appellate Court judges reversed a Cook County judge’s order that barred the release of the videos. The appellate judges found Cook County Judge Barbara Dawkins incorrectly denied a motion last year filed by several Chicago media outlets to lift a protective order on the footage.

Last year, Cook County prosecutors first asked that video footage be barred from disclosure via Freedom of Information Act laws, which was then granted by Judge Deidre Dyer.

Later, The Chicago Sun-Times, the Better Government Association, NBC Chicago and Jamie Kalven, founder of the Invisible Institute, filed a motion in court to intervene in the case, arguing that the state provided no “legal or factual justification” to deviate from public records laws.

Rivera was the first CPD officer to die in a friendly-fire incident in nearly four decades.

In 1986, Officer Jay Brunkella was fatally shot by his partner while the partner was struggling with a narcotics suspect in Rogers Park. That suspect was later convicted of Brunkella’s murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison, the Tribune previously reported.

Two years earlier, Officer Dorelle Brandon was fatally shot by her partner while she, too, struggled to arrest a narcotics suspect. That suspect was charged with murder in Brandon’s death, but was acquitted. However, he was convicted of a narcotics charge and sentenced to seven years in prison. Brandon was the first female CPD officer to die in the line of duty.

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