Another Odd Twist in Saga of ‘Buyback’ Gun That Ended Up Back On Chicago Streets

Earlier this month we reported on a bizarre story out of Chicago, where a gun that was turned in during a “buyback” event went missing after it was taken into custody by the Chicago Police Department. 

About eight months after that “buyback,” a woman named Twanda Willingham was shot in the leg, and the gun that was used was the same one that had gone missing. Willingham is now suing the CPD, and her attorneys allege that one or more Chicago cops must have been responsible for the theft of the Glock 21. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported a few weeks ago, Willingham named Sgt. Robert Brown, who was in charge of the buyback event, “and other, ‘unknown’ police officers as defendants along with the city of Chicago.”

The defendants tried to cover up the gun theft, according to the suit. A tag identifying the Glock had been slipped onto another gun, and an envelope for that gun was later found in the trash.

The lawsuit notes that the name of Officer Krystal Rivera was placed on those inventory records even though “she had nothing to do with the recovery of the guns, in an attempt to make it more difficult to track the Glock 21 pistol’s disappearance and hinder recovery efforts.”

Rivera was later shot and killed on June 5 by her partner, Officer Carlos Baker, another member of the Gresham District tactical team, in what the police department has said was a friendly-fire accident.

The lawsuit doesn’t allege that Rivera was killed by Baker because of the theft, though Rivera’s family has disputed the CPD’s characterization of her death as a tragic accident. 

The Chicago Police Department has not released bodycam footage from Baker’s camera, which has only fueled suspicions about the cirumstances of Rivera’s death. Now the Sun-Times reports that the CPD initially claimed that Rivera was shot and killed by a barricaded suspect after police investigators had viewed that bodycam footage showing it was Baker who fired the fatal shot. In fact, the paper says the police department still hasn’t corrected that false information submitted to the Illinois Department of Labor two months ago. 

A labor department spokesman won’t talk about the matter or the agency’s decision not to investigate the shooting. Agency records show officials never sought clarification from the police department, and their file on the death remains closed. 

Officer Carlos Baker, Rivera’s partner, shot and killed her with a single shot after they chased a man into an apartment building and encountered another man with a rifle just before 10 p.m. June 5 in the 8200 block of South Drexel Avenue in Chatham.

Rivera’s death was the first fatal police shooting in Chicago by another officer in nearly 40 years. Questions remain about the circumstances, including whether Baker intended to fire, or his gun malfunctioned, or he accidentally pulled the trigger.

An autopsy report released Wednesday, ruling Rivera’s death a homicide, shows she died from a single bullet that entered her back and lodged in her torso. The report doesn’t mention Rivera’s protective vest or where the shot might have entered relative to a vest.

The Cook County medical examiner’s report says the gun was fired by someone “knowing the action could cause death,” which appears at odds with a statement from the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability days after the shooting that called the shooting “unintentional.”

COPA won’t comment.

A Cook County spokeswoman says the homicide ruling meant Baker “was not coerced/forced to fire (the gun) by others” and that the death was “due to another (person).”

The police department won’t comment. It has said the shot “unintentionally” struck Rivera.

Antonio Romanucci, a lawyer for Rivera’s relatives, says they’re concerned about “bias being injected into this investigation. 

“From inaccuracies to what appear to be outright lies, even after the facts are known, to letting false information remain in the public domain, we are troubled by the lack of transparency and leadership at CPD on the tragic loss of an officer,” Romanucci says.

And rightfully so. Now, the Sun-Times does not that the Department of Labor doesn’t usually investigate incidents where officers are shot by criminal suspects, though it has the authority to do so. There might not be any nefarious reason the DoL declined to open an investigation, especially if the department had yet to be notified that Rivera’s death didn’t result from a shooting by a suspect, but instead her fellow officer. 

The lack of transparency on the part of the Chicago Police Department, though, is deeply troubling. Under Illinois law, bodycam footage is not generally a public record, though there are exceptions for incidents showing the “discharge of a firearm, use of force, arrest or detention, or resulting death or bodily harm.” It would certainly appear that Baker’s bodycam would fall under those provisions, but the CPD has so far balked at releasing the footage, or even showing it privately to Rivera’s family. 

Was Rivera killed as part of a coverup of the gun theft? Her family hasn’t asserted that, though her attorney has said that the official account her death doesn’t “pass the smell test.”  The gun was disappeared from CPD custody in December 2023, and was recovered in November, 2024. Rivera was shot and killed in June of this year, two months after the Sun-Times first reported on the theft of the firearm and an internal investgation was re-opened. At this point there’s nothing to suggest that Rivera was about to speak to investigators, or that Baker was connected to the theft of the Glock in any way. 

Then again, because of the lack of transparency regarding both the gun theft and Rivera’s death in the line of duty, there’s simply a lot we don’t know, which is all the more reason for the Chicago PD to be as transparent and forthcoming as possible. The bizarre twists in each of these incidents invites speculation, and the best way to put those theories to rest is for CPD to release all the relevant information in both investigations. I don’t know that the department will ever do that voluntarily, but perhaps Rivera’s family can get access to this material as a result of their lawsuit. At this point, that looks like the best way to learn the circumstances of Rivera’s death, and perhaps how that Glock ended up missing after police collected it during a “buyback.” 

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