Video: Officer Waited 90 Seconds After Shooting Partner Krystal Rivera

Body camera footage published by Chicago’s police oversight agency shows Officer Carlos Baker spent more than 90 seconds in cover before returning to his partner, Krystal Rivera, who lay on the floor of a Chatham apartment struggling to breathe after Baker’s own bullet struck her.

The Civilian Office of Police Accountability released the footage on Friday. It’s among the faster disclosures the agency has made in an active shooting investigation, and the speed of the release signals that COPA isn’t treating this one like a routine file.

The video shows Baker and Rivera chasing an armed man into a Chatham apartment on June 5, 2025. Baker kicks in the door. A second man materializes and levels a rifle at the officers. Baker turns, appears to stumble, and squeezes off a round. It hits Rivera. Baker runs up the stairs and stays there.

He doesn’t come back down for 90 seconds.

When Baker finally radios in, he tells dispatchers that both he and Rivera had been shot by a suspect. That’s not what the camera shows. He eventually carries Rivera downstairs to other officers waiting outside.

What Baker told COPA investigators afterward is now at the core of one of the most watched use-of-force cases Chicago has seen in years. He described Rivera as his best friend. He insisted he’d never intentionally shoot her. He claimed he didn’t even know he’d fired until he got to Area 2 detective headquarters and noticed a round was missing from his weapon.

“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.

He also told investigators he’d been thinking about Rivera the whole time. “I’ll die for her, that I had to get to her,” Baker said.

Rivera’s family doesn’t accept that. They’ve said Baker let her die.

There’s a hard gap between Baker’s words and the 90 seconds on that tape, and that’s what makes this case difficult to explain away. Baker’s defenders have pointed to the chaos inside the apartment: a cramped hallway, two armed men, a door breach that collapsed into something uncontrolled. Those aren’t invented conditions. Split-second errors happen in that kind of environment, and juries and oversight boards have been willing to say so.

But the video doesn’t capture a split second. It captures a minute and a half.

Rivera’s death on June 5, 2025 was already one of the rare confirmed friendly-fire fatalities among Chicago’s roughly 11,500 sworn officers. It’s the kind of incident that the department and the city would normally try to process quietly, framing it as a tragedy born from impossible circumstances. COPA’s decision to put the body cam footage out when the investigation isn’t closed suggests the agency calculated that public interest outweighed the standard caution.

The Civilian Office of Police Accountability has jurisdiction over serious use-of-force incidents citywide. The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office has not announced charges. As of Monday in 2026, Baker’s status with the department had not been publicly clarified.

Rivera’s family has made clear they won’t let this move quietly through an administrative process. The footage now makes that harder for anyone to expect. It’s one thing to argue about what an officer perceived in a fast-moving situation. It’s another when there’s 90 seconds of documented stillness on the tape while a woman dies downstairs.

The Illinois Answers Project and the Chicago Sun-Times first reported the contents of Baker’s investigative interview. COPA released the footage separately on Friday, adding the visual record to what had already become a disputed and very public account.