Krystal Rivera died after bullet went through opening in vest

The bullet that took the life of Chicago police Officer Krystal Rivera struck her from behind through an opening in her bulletproof vest, newly released autopsy records confirm.

More than two months after her death, Rivera’s autopsy was finalized last week by the Cook County medical examiner’s office. It was reviewed by the Tribune on Wednesday after an open-records request.

Investigators with the medical examiner’s office found Rivera was shot in her left flank from behind. The fatal shot pierced her skin near her left armpit and traveled through both her lungs, wedging itself in her ribs, autopsy records show.

“Because the lethal injury was caused by another individual who volitionally fired a weapon knowing the action could cause death,” the record states. “The manner is HOMICIDE.”

Rivera, 36, was unintentionally shot and killed in early June by a fellow Chicago Police Department officer, Carlos Baker, while they were chasing a suspect. A single mother of an adolescent daughter, she was the first CPD officer to die in a friendly fire incident in nearly 40 years.

Rivera’s family has since retained attorneys to conduct a civil investigation of the shooting.

“While the Rivera family and their legal team wholly believe removing Carlos Baker’s police powers is the appropriate decision, we called for this from the earliest days after he fatally shot his police partner, Krystal Rivera,” Antonio Romanucci, an attorney for the slain officer’s family, said in a statement last week. “However, as we stated clearly several weeks ago, the concerns about Carlos Baker go back further than the night he killed Krystal.

Romanucci previously noted six complaints were lodged against Baker in his relatively short career with CPD, including an allegation that he flashed a gun at a woman he had been talking to while she was on a date with another man inside a restaurant. Other allegations included excessive force and neglect of duty, according to records from the city’s Office of Inspector General.

“We believe that the warning signs had been there for years,” Romanucci said. “He never should have been an officer. In other licensed professions, this type of probationary behavior would have been the end of that person’s career.”

Neither CPD nor Baker has commented on Romanucci’s statements.

Earlier this month, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability opened an investigation after Baker allegedly battered an off-duty female CPD officer at a bar in Wicker Park. Soon after, he was stripped of his police powers.

A CPD spokesperson would not say what incident prompted Baker to be stripped of his police powers, though CBS Chicago reported that Baker attempted to interfere with that investigation by contacting nearby businesses about surveillance footage of the incident.

Rivera and Baker, both part of the Gresham (6th) District tactical team, were trying to make a traffic stop on a suspect and chased him into an apartment at 8210 S. Drexel Ave., police have said. Inside the apartment, they met a man who allegedly pointed a rifle at them.

Prosecutors said that Rivera was running down a hallway when she was shot. Though two men now face an array of weapons and narcotics charges in connection with the shooting, neither faces a count of murder in her death.

In June, a judge granted a motion from the Cook County state’s attorney’s office that prohibits any city agency from releasing materials related to the shooting — officer body-worn camera and other memoranda — as those criminal cases are pending. Similar orders are often entered in criminal cases that stem from police shootings, and those orders are lifted once a case is adjudicated.