Chicago police Officer Krystal Rivera was mistakenly shot and killed by a fellow cop during a confrontation with an armed suspect, according to police, who continued to hold at least two people in custody as of late Friday.
The department announced Rivera had been struck by friendly fire about a day after she died. She and the Gresham (6th) district tactical team she had been a part of were trying to conduct an investigatory stop in the Chatham neighborhood, police have said, and encountered an armed suspect after chasing a person into an apartment building on the 8200 block of South Drexel Avenue.
An autopsy conducted Friday found that Rivera had died of a gunshot wound to the back.
“As released in yesterday’s preliminary statement, an officer discharged his weapon during the encounter with an armed offender,” the statement read. “Further investigation revealed the only weapon discharged during this incident was the weapon of the officer, whose gunfire unintentionally struck Officer Rivera.”
Rivera, 36, a four-year veteran of the police force, leaves behind a young daughter. She lived in the Irving Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side. Police said they were continuing to investigate the suspect the tactical team met in the apartment, who allegedly pointed a rifle at the officers.
“This offender remains in custody,” the police department said in a statement. “Detectives also continue to investigate the circumstances that led to the investigative stop preceding the encounter.”
At least two people remained in custody as of late Friday night, though Supt. Larry Snelling said “several” people were initially arrested following the shooting.
Just after the time of the shooting Thursday, officers found and detained a 25-year-old man and 26-year-old woman in a gated yard near an apartment building at 8215 S. Maryland Ave., according to police sources. The man was described in arrest paperwork as being armed with a rifle.
According to police sources, authorities had issued multiple active warrants for the man out of Cook County and Stephenson County and Winnebago County, both in northwestern Illinois. The woman had one active warrant, according to police sources, and both are listed in arrest records as residents of Freeport in northwestern Illinois.
Rivera was the first city police officer to be killed in the line of duty this year.
The last cop to suffer fatal injuries on the job was Enrique Martinez, 26. Martinez, who was also assigned to the same Gresham District as Rivera, was fatally shot in November in the 8200 block of South Ingleside Avenue— just one street east of where Rivera was killed Thursday.
She was widely mourned by city officials and her fellow officers, who praised her work ethic and asked Chicagoans to keep her family in their prayers.
Investigators recovered three weapons at the scene and were still reviewing body-worn camera footage, Snelling said after the shooting, and the Civilian Office of Police Accountability was investigating.
After the shooting, police officers took their wounded colleague to the hospital in a squad car, which crashed and caught fire on the way there because of what Snelling described as a malfunction with the vehicle. Another squad car finished the trip, Snelling said, and the officers in the first car were “doing fine.”
“The way that she worked, it was evident that she did love her job,” Snelling said. “She wanted to make Chicago a better place.”
Rivera’s mother, reached by phone, declined to comment.
In a statement posted to social media, the mayor asked Chicagoans to keep Rivera’s family in their prayers, especially her young daughter who will “who will miss her mom for the rest of her life.”
Rivera had an “unmatched work ethic,” Johnson said.
“Officer Rivera was a hero who served on the force for four years. She had a long career in front of her. A bright future was stolen from her family and from her loved ones,” he said in the statement.
Family friend Alicia Headrick described Rivera as someone who was “unapologetically herself and wanted everyone else to be able to tap into that as well.”
Headrick, 28 and a Grundy County sheriff’s deputy, said she mostly stayed in touch with Rivera via social media. While they occasionally talked about working for two very different law enforcement agencies, Headrick mainly remembered Rivera cheering her on and likened her to an older sister. Rivera had been a single mother for some time and was ferociously independent, she said.
“(Rivera) just always wanted to make a life and career for herself and for her daughter,” Headrick said. “She had a very pure heart that just wanted to serve other people.”