Crime & Law
After City Council Refused to Settle, Lawsuit Filed by Family of Woman Killed by Driver Being Chased by CPD Set for Trial
(WTTW News)
A Cook County jury is set to decide whether the Chicago Police Department is liable for the death of a 55-year-old woman who was struck and killed by a driver being chased by officers, records show.
The Chicago City Council refused in February to pay $8.25 million to resolve the lawsuit filed by the family of Dominga Flores Gomez, who died in the crash that ended the chase launched by two Chicago Police Department officers just before 9 p.m. Sept. 28, 2022.
The city and its lawyers will now have to convince a jury that the officers did nothing wrong while pursuing a Honda HR-V that had been carjacked when the crash that killed Flores Gomez occurred.
Through July, the city paid three private law firms more than $703,000 to defend the city and the officers involved in the pursuit and the crash that killed Flores Gomez, who was survived by five children and eight grandchildren, according to records obtained by WTTW News.
The trial set to start Monday will represent a high-stakes gamble for the city that comes amid growing frustration at the financial toll of police misconduct settlements, which have cost Chicago taxpayers more than $245 million since the start of 2026, according to a WTTW News analysis of city records.
That includes $46 million to the families of those killed or seriously injured during a police pursuit that violated CPD policy, records show.
Since 2019, the city has paid a total of $236 million to resolve dozens of lawsuits prompted by police pursuits, while the city’s insurance has paid an additional $80 million since 2025, records show.
The City Council is set to consider paying $6 million to resolve a separate lawsuit filed by the family of a man killed during a police pursuit.
Thomas Power, the attorney for Flores Gomez’s family, said he was surprised the City Council refused to settle the lawsuit triggered by her death, given that the city has resolved eight other lawsuits involving police pursuits already this year and is poised to resolve a ninth claim.
“I can’t explain it,” Power said.
The pursuit that ended with Flores Gomez’s death lasted for 11 miles and reached speeds of up to 95 mph in an area of the city where the speed limit is 30 mph. Officer Tobias Houston, who led the pursuit, “ran 20 red lights and several stop signs,” Deputy Corporation Counsel Maggie Mendenhall Casey told members of the City Council’s Finance Committee.
At trial, the jury will hear that Houston has been suspended three times for a total of six days for engaging in pursuits that violated CPD policy. One of those pursuits, which ended in a chain-reaction crash involving five cars, occurred just 10 days before Flores Gomez was killed, Mendenhall Casey said.
The lawsuit filed by Flores Gomez’s family also names Juan C. Vazquez, the driver of the stolen car that crashed into her car at Kedzie Avenue and 31st Street and killed her. Vazquez, who was convicted of reckless homicide, remains in prison, Mendenhall Casey said. Vazquez has been subpoenaed to testify.
Vazquez, who was 17 at the time of the crash, has no assets that could be used to compensate Flores Gomez’s family for her death, Mendenhall Casey said.
More than three years after Flores Gomez was killed, the pursuit was still under investigation by CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs when the City Council rejected the settlement recommended by the city’s lawyers, according to a CPD spokesperson.
A federal court order requires internal affairs complaints to be resolved in six months.
CPD changed its vehicle pursuit policy in 2020 and then again in 2022 — before Flores Gomez was killed — to require officers to “consider the need for immediate apprehension of an eluding suspect and the requirement to protect the public from the danger created by eluding offenders.”
Mendenhall Casey told committee members that attorneys for Flores Gomez’s family will likely argue that Houston, and those officers supervising the pursuit, allowed it to reach excessive speeds and last for too long to comply with that balancing test.
In addition, Houston led the entire pursuit while driving an unmarked police vehicle, even though CPD’s policy calls for a squad car — with lights and sirens — to replace an unmarked car during a pursuit as soon as possible, Mendenhall Casey said. There is no evidence that CPD officials complied with that provision of the policy.
In December 2024, a Cook County jury ordered the city to pay $79.85 million to the family of Da’Karia Spicer, who was killed in a crash on Sept. 2, 2020, that ended a police pursuit.
After that verdict, one of the largest in Chicago history, lawyers for the city reached an agreement to resolve the lawsuit by paying a total of $62.5 million, with $20 million coming directly from Chicago taxpayers and the city’s insurance company paying $42.5 million, records show.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
