After being arrested for allegedly robbing a dollar store on Saturday morning, Alphanso Talley allegedly told police he had swallowed some drugs, so officers took him to Endeavor Health Swedish Hospital in the Lincoln Square neighborhood to get checked out.
What unfolded next was an act of violence that left one Chicago police officer dead and a second fighting for his life, authorities said Monday. Talley allegedly was able to hide a gun up until a CT scan was about to be performed. That’s when Talley allegedly pulled the pistol — illegally bought in an Indiana straw purchase — out from under a blanket, shooting one officer in the face and a second in the chin.
Prosecutors have charged the 26-year-old Talley with murder, attempted murder and escaping from police, among other charges. He also had three warrants outstanding for his arrest, according to police.
It was the first multiple shooting of Chicago police officers since the 2021 killing of Officer Ella French and the severe wounding of her partner, Carlos Yanez.
Talley’s case was called midday for a detention hearing at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, where police brass, police union leaders, aldermen, Yanez and members of Officer John Bartholomew’s family were in attendance. Judge Luciano Panici Jr. ordered Talley detained as the case against him progresses.
It remained unclear Monday how the gun used in the shooting entered the hospital. Police sources told the Tribune that investigators were weighing if Talley was able to hide the gun in a body cavity to evade it being found in a pat down and prior to being treated, or if he was properly searched.
Talley was seated at a defense table flanked by five courtroom deputies and cuffed. He refused to acknowledge the judge when asked for his name several times.
“Good morning, sir, are you Alphanso Talley?” the judge asked.
Talley, in a white T-shirt and grey sweatpants, kept his head down and did not answer.
“Let’s try that again,” Panici said. “Sir, what is your name?”
Talley didn’t answer.
Assistant State’s Attorney Mike Pekara told Panici that the proffer in the case ran 10 pages. Talley sat silent at the defense table, with Cook County sheriff’s deputies standing over him as Pekara said Talley had been arrested on the heels of an alleged armed robbery at a dollar store, then arrested nearby.
Talley allegedly told the police officers arresting him that he’d swallowed several bags of drugs, Pekara said, and was taken to Swedish Hospital for a CT scan.
Talley was undressed and given a hospital gown, Pekara said, but kept a blanket over him as he was being prepared for the scan. As soon as Bartholomew uncuffed him from the hospital bed, Pekara said, Talley reached underneath the blanket, took out a 10-millimeter handgun and shot him in the head.
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He then shot the second officer in the face, Pekara said, and shot out a window to escape from the hospital building. Authorities said the gun had been purchased under false pretenses in Indiana.
Shortly before the bond hearing for Talley began, federal prosecutors in Indiana revealed that the gun Talley allegedly used to shoot the officers had been illegally purchased at a gun range in 2024.
Olivia Burgos was charged in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Hammond with straw-purchasing the Glock 29 pistol at Range USA in Merrillville on May 27, 2024. The person she bought the gun for, identified only as “Individual A,” was a convicted felon at the time and barred from buying the gun himself, according to the complaint.
According to the complaint, Burgos listed her address on the paperwork in La Porte, Indiana, but in truth she was living with Individual A in nearby Highland at that time. She also lied by saying she was purchasing the gun for herself, and that she had not used drugs, according to the charges.
Agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives interviewed Burgos at her current home in Harvey on Saturday, the day of the shooting at Swedish Hospital. She told agents she’s been “addicted to fentanyl” since April 2024 and lied on the paperwork because she knew that if she told the truth, the purchase would have been rejected.
As for the hospital shooting, police ultimately arrested Talley underneath a porch on the 2600 block of West Carmen Avenue soon afterward, Pekara said.
When reached by the Tribune, Talley’s mother, Tamika Vaughen, said her son has been in and out of treatment facilities and medicated for mental health challenges his entire life. She said she spoke with him Sunday while he was in custody and he told her he did not remember anything about the armed robbery, shooting the two officers or fleeing the scene.
According to Vaughen, Talley was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when he was around 7 years old.
“No one is talking about that,” she said.
Back in court as Pekara spoke, a police officer reached out to put her hand on the shoulder of a young man seated in one of the front rows, evidently a family member of one of the two officers.
The assistant public defender on the case said they had not yet been able to have a confidential conversation with Talley and asked that they continue the detention hearing to Thursday. She also requested a healthcare order for him. Judge Panici, visibly frustrated with Talley’s refusals to answer his questions, ordered Talley held in custody until then.
That order to detain Talley extended to other warrants. One was for an alleged a lapse in his pretrial electronic monitoring at the time of the alleged crime, Cook County court records show.
Judge John F. Lyke had issued a warrant for Talley’s arrest March 11 while he was on pretrial release for a previous armed robbery case, according to court records. That warrant was still active as of Sunday evening.
A spokesperson for the Cook County sheriff’s office said in a statement to the Tribune that the office “did not receive a request to expedite execution of the warrants issued for Talley’s arrest.”
The March 11 warrant was entered into a law enforcement database the following day and was “accessible to every law enforcement agency in the country. Additionally, by entering the warrant into this system, any law enforcement agency that knows the individual, or encounters that individual, would be aware of the outstanding warrant,” according to the sheriff’s office.
Court records show Talley, a resident of the South Shore neighborhood, has been in and out of prison since 2017, mostly for a series of armed robbery cases.
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The electronic monitoring arrangement dates back to December 2025, when a bench trial had been scheduled for the case but continued by agreement, court records show. Documents show Talley had been scheduled to plead in the case Jan. 8 of this year but there is no record of him actually pleading guilty or not guilty.
The next day, Jan. 9, state prison records show Talley was paroled from Stateville Correctional Center, where he was listed as an absconder. He’d been serving concurrent sentences for 2023 and 2024 cases over possession of a stolen vehicle and battering a police officer.
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Authorities changed his electronic monitoring conditions to give him limited movement for school or work, records show, though Cook County prosecutors filed a sanctions petition in February, alleging Talley had violated the terms of his release. The petition, contained in court records, did not specify the nature of that violation.
A pretrial monitoring report from March 11 shows that Talley was first fitted with an ankle monitor Dec. 11 of last year, on the same day as a bench trial before Judge Lyke that appeared to be continued. He had been allowed limited movement Monday through Thursday, but court records show his monitor had alerted two violations within three days in early March.
On March 9, the report stated, the monitor “entered communication loss: sleep mode due to failure to charge. The individual’s whereabouts are unknown.”
After the hearing, John Catanzara, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, the union that represents Chicago police officers, harshly criticized the SAFE-T Act and the county’s criminal courts judges who repeatedly released Talley from custody in his prior crimes of violence.
“It needs to (expletive) stop,” Catanzara said in the lobby of the Leighton Criminal Courts Building.
Asked about the condition of the other officer shot on Saturday, Catanzara said: “It’s very bad, it’s extremely critical. It’s not good. It’s going to take a miracle.”
Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, a fervent police supporter whose brother is a Chicago Police Department officer, echoed the FOP president, adding: “We should not be here today. This is a consequence of a failed system.”
Nilofar Hashmy, who lives across the street from the Carmen Avenue home where Talley was found fleeing from police, said she first heard about Saturday’s shooting from her neighborhood group chat.
Living just a few blocks from Swedish Hospital, her family is accustomed to hearing sirens at all hours of the day, she said, but she knew something was different when she saw “more policemen and police cars than (she) had ever seen outside of a movie screen.”
Hashmy watched as officers went door to door on the north side of the street, until they all swarmed into one house and escorted Talley out from what she believed to be a crawl space in the backyard.
Talley will come before Judge Lyke on Tuesday morning regarding his other arrest warrants. He is set to return to court Thursday for the murder case.
Tribune reporters Jason Meisner and Audrey Pachuta contributed.