The mother of Chicago police Officer Krystal Rivera filed a wrongful death lawsuit Wednesday in which she says her daughter’s partner, Officer Carlos Baker, was struggling to accept her decision to end their romantic relationship when he fatally shot her during a foot chase on June 5.
The lawsuit, filed in Cook County court against Baker and the Chicago Police Department, says the breakup stemmed from Baker’s infidelity and that Rivera had threatened to tell his live-in girlfriend about their relationship.
It says Baker showed up uninvited at Rivera’s home a day before the Gresham District tactical officers chased a gunman into an apartment in Chatham and encountered a second armed man, leading Baker to fire a single gunshot, which pierced Rivera’s back, killing her.
Baker then “ran in the opposite direction and left her to die,” according to the lawsuit, which says he failed to provide medical aid, call for an ambulance or acknowledge he was the shooter.
Rivera was 36.
Baker, 28, knew that “Rivera’s death would prevent her from making disclosures that would likely destroy his relationship with his long-term girlfriend,” the lawsuit says.
The police department has described the shooting as a tragic accident.
Yolanda Rivera, the dead officer’s mother, says in the lawsuit that Baker should have never been a cop. She points to his lengthy disciplinary record, another troubling accusation involving an unrequited love interest and her daughter’s warnings to supervisors that he had been reckless on the job.
Other members of the department knew the relationship had ended, that Rivera wanted to be reassigned away from Baker and that she “believed Baker was a threat to her personal safety,” the lawsuit says.
“Our family has a long history of service in this department,” Yolanda Rivera said in a written statement. “She became our family’s first female police officer, and we were incredibly proud. Krystal understood the dangers of her job. She accepted the risks that come with policing.
“What she never should have had to fear was her own partner,” said Rivera, who is represented by attorney Antonio Romanucci. “That betrayal cost her life.”
Baker’s attorney didn’t respond to requests for comment Wednesday. Neither did the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which is investigating the shooting.
The police department wouldn’t comment.
Baker has been stripped of his policing powers since August, though not as a result of the shooting. That step came after the department said he tried to obtain surveillance video that captured a fight he and another woman got into with a female police officer inside the vestibule of a bar in Wicker Park. The female officer was treated at a hospital for a split lip.
Since joining the department in December 2021, Baker has faced three suspensions and two reprimands, records show, including being disciplined over a complaint that he failed to arrest a home invader — on his first shift working the streets.
He accrued five complaints as a probationary officer, when the department could have fired him because he had few union protections.
During that period, he also was accused of flashing a gun at a woman he met online while she was on a date at a North Side bar. The woman wouldn’t cooperate with investigators, though, and he faced no discipline.
The lawsuit says that the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability closed its investigation into the incident “unusually fast” — in 3½ months — and that showed the city did not “adequately comply” with its duties to investigate the domestic violence accusation.
Despite the complaints, Baker was appointed to the Gresham District tactical team in April 2024. That made him one of the least experienced officers appointed to a tactical team at the time, according to police scheduling data. But about a month later, he was removed due to his inexperience, the lawsuit says.
In March 2025, Baker returned to the unit, where he worked until the night he shot and killed Rivera.