Crime & Law
Partner Who Fatally Shot CPD Officer Krystal Rivera Waited Almost 2 Minutes After Shooting to Provide Aid, New Video Shows
Video: Body-worn camera video from Officer Carlos A. Baker shows the minutes before and after the fatal shooting of Officer Krystal Rivera. Warning: This video contains graphic content.
The Chicago police officer who fatally shot his partner Krystal Rivera during a June 2025 foot pursuit waited approximately two minutes before responding to her as she lay dying inside a Chatham apartment building, body camera video of the incident shows.
Video evidence released Friday by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability showed for the first time what happened in the chaotic scene as Officer Carlos A. Baker shot Rivera as they chased another man they believed was carrying a firearm.
Since the shooting, Baker has been relieved of his police powers and Rivera’s family has sued both him and the Chicago Police Department, alleging the shooting came after Rivera broke off a romantic relationship with him.
COPA’s investigation into the shooting remains ongoing.
Baker’s attorney Tim Grace on Friday said the videos published Friday show his client “did everything in his power and training to render aid to his fallen partner and placed himself in harms way” to get to her.
“He acted within the policies of the Chicago Police Department,” Grace said.
Grace maintained that Baker’s firearm “unintentionally discharged,” striking Rivera. He said rather than directing blame at Baker, the reason Rivera died is because “a person decided to flee from Chicago Police Officers with a loaded handgun … and another who decided to point a rifle at those same officers.”
The videos published Friday show the shooting from both Rivera and Baker’s perspectives through their respective body-worn cameras.
Baker’s video begins with him behind the wheel of a squad car on June 5, 2025, before he and Rivera exit and approach a man — later identified as Jaylin Arnold — outside an apartment building.
Cook County prosecutors have alleged the officers observed Arnold walking with “an unusually large bulge” under his jacket allegedly consistent with a drum magazine. When he looked at the officers, Rivera took off running, followed by police, prosecutors said.
The officers tell Arnold to freeze, but he enters the building, followed shortly after by Baker and Rivera — with their guns drawn — who chase him up a staircase to the second floor.
As Arnold runs into an apartment at the end of a second-floor hallway, Baker turns and fires a single shot back in the direction of Rivera, who was running behind him, the video shows.
“Shots fired at police,” Baker yelled as he ran up another flight of stairs toward the third floor, before shouting out his address and repeatedly radioing in “10-1” to warn of an emergency.
About 30 seconds after the shooting, Baker yelled out “Krystal, you good?” Rivera did not respond. He then requests an ambulance saying he “can’t get my partner.”
“Squad, my partner’s hit, my partner’s hit, get me an ambulance now,” Baker said as he crept back down the stairs toward the open doorway. But he then stopped and went back up the stairs, saying again that he couldn’t get to Rivera and requesting a SWAT team.
Approximately two minutes after the shooting, Baker descended the stairs and made his way over to Rivera, pulling her motionless body with him toward the stairs heading down to the first floor. A pool of blood can be seen under her body.
After repeating his location over the radio, Rivera repeatedly says “Come on Krys” and “stay with me Krys” as he dragged her body down to the first floor, the video shows.
Other officers arrive on scene and Baker yells at them to “get her in the car” and get her to the hospital before his body camera video ends.
Video: Body-worn camera video video from Officer Krystal Rivera. Warning: This video contains graphic content.
Rivera’s video shows her running behind Baker up the staircase. As he got to the apartment door, her camera captured the sounds of a gunshot and a woman screaming before the video abruptly ended.
“Our hearts remain with fallen Officer Krystal Rivera’s family,” a CPD spokesperson said in a statement Friday. “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.”
Arnold and another man, Adrian Rucker, have since been charged in connection with the incident.
Prosecutors previously said Baker “accidentally discharged” his firearm, striking and killing her.
Rivera’s family and their attorneys have previously disputed the CPD’s narrative of the shooting, saying during a press conference last summer that it “does not yet pass the smell test.”
Antonio Romanucci, an attorney for the Rivera family, said previously that Rivera and Baker became involved in an on-again, off-again romantic relationship dating back to 2023, which was known to other CPD employees.
Rivera eventually broke that relationship off last year after learning Baker was involved with another woman, her family’s attorneys said, and threatened to inform the other woman of their relationship.
Attorneys for the Rivera family expressed concerns about Baker’s “adverse reaction” to the breakup and his continued attempts to contact her outside of work. Less than 48 hours before she was shot, Baker showed up at Rivera’s home uninvited after she told him not to come, the attorneys said.
Attorneys for Rivera’s family issued a new statement of their own saying the “edited video clips” raised “a number of serious questions.”
“The first and foremost being that this is NOT all of the body-worn video footage from the event,” Romanucci said in a statement. “What has been released is a curated narrative meant to invent a false truth.”
Romanucci claimed there’s a “considerable” amount of body-worn camera footage in the immediate moments after Krystal was shot that was not released Friday. He said his legal team previously viewed the body cam footage and claimed they found at least one discrepancy between what they viewed earlier and the videos released today.
The Rivera family reiterated its call for an independent investigation into the shooting, and Romanucci said Friday his legal team does not have confidence that the existing investigation is being handled in a “fair and objective manner.”
“We reassert that Carlos Baker was unfit to be a Chicago Police Officer and that CPD put Krystal at risk by giving him a badge and a gun,” he said. “More so, he failed in his duty to render life-saving aid to his Krystal after he shot her.”
Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 President John Catanzara posted a YouTube video Friday in which he criticized those he said sought to “create their own narrative” before watching the video.
He said “everything relevant” to Baker firing his weapon occurred in under three seconds.
“Everybody can see for themselves what a tragic series of events this was that cost Krystal her life,” Catanzara said.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
