Two men charged in shooting of Bedford Park police officer
Cook County prosecutors charged two men Tuesday in the shooting of a Bedford Park police officer who was struck by gunfire as he responded to a Sunday morning car crash.
Blue Island resident Raul Pérez, 24, faces felony charges for attempted murder of a police officer, attempted aggravated vehicular hijacking and as an armed habitual criminal, court records show. A second man, 22-year-old Luis Gonzalez, of Chicago’s Garfield Ridge neighborhood, was charged with attempted aggravated vehicular hijacking.
The two men tried to carjack another person of a 2016 Jeep Compass while Pérez was armed with two guns, prosecutors alleged. As a Bedford Park police officer responded to the alleged crime, Pérez shot in the officer’s direction five times, prosecutors said. The bullets struck the officer three times in the chest and abdomen and one time in his left arm, they continued.
A judge determined Pérez and Gonzalez must be detained before trial. Both men have recently appeared in Cook County Court for other alleged crimes.
Pérez pleaded guilty in May 2019 to a charge of possession of cocaine and was sentenced to a two-year probation term. In a separate 2019 trial, he was sentenced to three years and six months in prison after pleading guilty to illegally possessing a gun while facing a slew of charges related to illegal drug and gun possession.
The 24-year-old was sentenced to a three-year prison term in March after pleading guilty to a possession of a stolen vehicle charge related to a 2021 arrest for which he was also accused of battering an officer, court records show. He was given credit for time served and released from custody.
Pérez was also charged Tuesday for aggravated fleeing and alluding for allegedly speeding away as officers attempted to pull him over in late October.
Gonzalez appeared in court Nov. 20 after he was arrested and charged for allegedly unlawfully carrying a loaded pistol and possessing over 20 grams of what police suspected was cocaine. Judge Linzey Jones determined he did not need to be detained before trial but ordered him to surrender all firearms.
The officer shot Sunday had been responding to reports of an unoccupied vehicle with “heavy damage” in the 6700 block of South Archer Road around 3:40 a.m. Sunday morning, the Bedford Park Police Department said Wednesday. The car had been reported stolen in a Chicago carjacking, police said. Surveillance footage showed two people as they fled the wrecked car and got into a parked car at a nearby Speedway gas station.
The men refused to comply as officers approached them and physically resisted arrest, authorities said. The shooter fired at the officer after the struggle, police said.
The wounded police officer remains hospitalized in stable condition, police said.
