The officer, John Rivera, 23, was shot in a parked car early Saturday along with a friend, who was hospitalized and is now in stable condition, according to Melissa Staples, the Chicago Police Department’s chief of detectives.
Surveillance camera video showed that one of the two men who have been charged in the attack, Menelik Jackson, 24, encountered the Latino men on a party bus in front of a McDonald’s in the River North neighborhood, Staples said at a news conference Monday. Jackson, who is black, was punched in the face by one of the men and ran away, the chief said.
Shortly after, Jackson returned, but the party bus had left the area, Staples said. Jackson then got in his white Ford pickup truck and searched the area for the bus but did not find it, she said.
Staples said that an hour after the confrontation in front of the McDonald’s, Jackson approached a car with two friends: Jovan Battle, 32, and another man police are still searching for. She said Jackson then shot at the car with a .40-caliber handgun, killing Rivera and wounding his friend.
“It appears that he was just looking for a Hispanic person,” Eddie Johnson, the Chicago police superintendent, said. “He was searching around for the party bus, the party bus had left the area, so I guess he settled for the first Hispanic he saw,” Johnson said, adding that Jackson had confessed.
Jackson and Battle have each been charged with one count of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder. They are being held without bail.
Johnson also said authorities “have been pursuing possible hate crime charges since the beginning.”
Chris Anderson, a public defender who is representing Battle, said his client did not “share the intent of the shooter based on what the state proffered.” He added Battle “suffers from bipolar disorder and depression, receives SSI and disability, was denied phone calls, and has a severe, untreated, old and deep cut to his finger that needs medical attention.”
Battle has been ordered to the jail hospital for treatment, Anderson said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.