Video: Officer Waited 90 Seconds After Shooting Partner Krystal Rivera

Body camera video released by Chicago’s police oversight agency shows that Officer Carlos Baker took cover for more than 90 seconds after fatally shooting his partner, Krystal Rivera, before checking on her as she struggled to breathe.

The footage, published Friday by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, known as COPA, captures Baker and Rivera pursuing an armed man into a Chatham apartment on June 5, 2025. After Baker kicks in the door, a second man appears and points a rifle at the officers. Baker turns, appears to stumble, and fires. The shot hits Rivera. Baker then runs up a staircase.

He doesn’t go back to her. Not for 90 seconds.

After calling for backup and initially reporting that he and Rivera had been shot by a suspect, Baker eventually carries Rivera downstairs to waiting officers.

The contrast between Baker’s actions on the video and his account to investigators sits at the center of what has become one of the most scrutinized officer-involved shooting cases in Chicago in years. In an interview with COPA, Baker told investigators that he and Rivera were “best friends” and that he would “never” intentionally shoot her. He said he didn’t realize he had fired his weapon until he checked his gun at the Area 2 detective headquarters and found a round was missing.

“I was lost and confused. I was in denial that I even fired my weapon,” Baker told investigators, according to interview recordings obtained by the Illinois Answers Project and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Baker also told investigators he was willing to risk his life for Rivera and recalled thinking, “I’ll die for her, that I had to get to her.”

Rivera’s family has a different view. They said Baker “let her die.”

The footage adds a new layer of scrutiny to Baker’s account. Body camera video is rarely released this quickly in cases still under investigation, and COPA’s decision to publish it signals the agency is treating the shooting with heightened transparency. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability handles investigations into serious use-of-force incidents and officer-involved shootings across the department’s roughly 11,500 sworn members.

The Chatham shooting already carried significant weight before the video came out. Rivera’s death marked one of the rare instances in Chicago where an officer was killed by friendly fire during an active pursuit. The circumstances, a cramped apartment, two armed men, a doorway breach that went wrong, fit the kind of chaotic scenario where split-second errors happen. Baker’s defenders have leaned on exactly that framing.

But 90 seconds is a specific, documentable gap, and Rivera’s family and their attorneys are unlikely to let that number go.

The case also touches on the personal. Baker told COPA investigators that he and Rivera had a romantic relationship at some point, though the precise nature of that relationship and when it occurred wasn’t fully detailed in materials released so far. Rivera’s family has disputed Baker’s characterization of their bond. The relationship timeline could become relevant if investigators conclude that interpersonal factors played any role in the shooting or in Baker’s conduct afterward.

No criminal charges have been filed against Baker as of Monday. The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office has not publicly said whether it is reviewing the case for potential prosecution. The Chicago Police Department placed Baker on desk duty following the shooting, which is standard procedure when an officer’s weapon discharges and results in injury or death.

COPA’s investigation remains open. The agency typically submits findings and recommendations to the police superintendent and the Chicago Police Board once its review is complete, but those bodies are not bound to follow COPA’s conclusions.

The Rivera family’s attorneys have called for Baker to be fired and prosecuted. Whether the State’s Attorney moves forward with charges will depend in part on what the full body camera record shows about Baker’s state of mind and movements inside that Chatham apartment in the seconds before and after the shot.

For now, the clearest facts are in the footage. Baker fired. Rivera fell. He ran upstairs, called for help, and waited 90 seconds before returning to the partner he told investigators he would have died for.