Thursday, March 28

Days after being wounded in NW Side road rage shooting, Chicago cop is ‘no longer a member of the department’


An off-duty Chicago cop who was wounded in an apparent road rage shooting last week in Irving Park “is no longer a member of the department,” a police spokesman said Monday.

The ex-cop, a 27-year-old woman, “was a probationary police officer at the time and we do not disclose personnel matters,” spokesman Tom Ahern said.

Law enforcement sources said she failed a drug test Sept. 17 and was stripped of her police powers that day. A source said she was later fired.

She couldn’t immediately be reached.

She graduated from the police academy May 31. A video of the ceremony shows her walking across the stage at the Aon Grand Ballroom at Navy Pier and shaking hands with police leaders and Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

No one has been arrested in connection with the shooting Sept. 20 at the intersection of Elston Avenue and Addison Street. The officer was shot in the face during a dispute that continued over a few blocks.

The shooting set off a frantic search for the gunman across the Northwest Side. Another officer allegedly fired at the suspect’s SUV while unsuccessfully trying to stop the vehicle. That officer was placed on desk duty for a month, required under department policy.

The chaotic series of events began about 3 p.m. when the off-duty officer stopped her 2023 Range Rover at Addison Street and Kedzie Avenue and was rear-ended by a Yukon carrying the suspected shooter, according to a police crash report. The Yukon reversed, went around the Range Rover and took off west on Addison, the report says. The officer followed until the Yukon backed into her SUV in the 3600 block of North Elston Avenue.

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Video of the shooting shows the officer left her SUV in the street and stumbled to a nearby Jiffy Lube service station after a gunman popped out of the Yukon’s rear passenger window and shot her. She was rushed to Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where she was treated and released, police said.

After the shooting, other officers pursued the Yukon, which had dealer plates and was spotted traveling on the Northwest Side. Around 3:40 p.m., an officer broadcast a report of “shots fired” near the Kennedy Expressway and Lawrence Avenue, adding that the Yukon fled west on Foster from the highway. Police said the Yukon had struck two police vehicles before the officer fired those shots.

On the police radio, the officer didn’t say who fired the shots, but the Civilian Office of Police Accountability later responded to an “officer-involved shooting near 5000 block of West Lawrence.”Jennifer Rottner, a spokeswoman for the oversight agency, confirmed an officer opened fire. Police policies generally prohibit officers from both shooting out of and into vehicles.

According to radio traffic, the officer later alerted a dispatcher that he may have shot the gunman. “I might [have] hit that guy so notify all the suburban hospitals and all the hospitals in the area,” the officer said. Rottner said there’s no evidence anyone was hit.

The Yukon was found unoccupied in the 5800 block of North Drake Avenue, police said.



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