Chicago Police Officer Luis Huesca's death Sunday marked at least the eighth time a police officer in Illinois has died by gunfire since 2020, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, a national non-profit that keeps data on law enforcement deaths.
Huesca is also the third Chicago Police officer to have been fatally shot in the past two years.
Chicago Police Officer Aréanah Preston was killed last May during an attempted robbery; two months before that, fellow Chicago Police Officer Andres Vasquez Lasso died while responding to a domestic incident.
Ella French was shot and killed during a traffic stop in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood in August of 2021. She had served with the CPD for nearly three-and-a-half years and was assigned to the Community Safety Team. She was survived by her mother and brother.
All four gunfire deaths in Chicago since 2020 occurred on Chicago's South Side.
While incomplete, FBI data that tracks law enforcement officers killed or assaulted found that between 2015 to 2019, a total of 257 officers were killed nationwide.
According to NBC 5 Investigates' reviews of that data, 105 officers killed in that timeframe died while conducting police work.
Forty-four were killed in what was described as an ambush, and 15 were classified as being killed in an unprovoked attack.
The details of what happened to Officer Luis Huesca still aren't entirely clear.
What we do know: Chicago police responded to a report from gunfire from a ShotSpotter notification shortly around 2:53 a.m. Sunday in the 5500 block of South Kedzie Avenue in Gage Park.
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During a news conference Sunday morning, Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling told reporters that Huesca was on his way home after a shift at the time of the shooting. Officials said he was in uniform and his vehicle was taken following the shooting.
"The officer was wearing his uniform, [but] he had something covering it up," Supt. Snelling said. "We’re still at preliminary stages right now."
Police are investigating the circumstances of the shooting, including whether the incident began as a carjacking, according to officials.
"What we do know is that the officer's vehicle was taken, but to get to the total motive of what happened we need more information and the detective division is working on that," Snelling said Sunday.
On Monday afternoon, Officer Vazquez Lasso’s mother Rosio Lasso met with Huesca's family to offer her support.
"It’s very hard," she told reporters in Spanish, noting that the memories of her son were stirred up.
Huesca and Vasquez Lasso were friends, and Huesca had eulogized his fellow officer during a video that was shared on YouTube.
Retired Chicago Police Sgt. Richard Schak, now a criminal justice professor at National Louis University in Chicago, told NBC Chicago that homicide detectives must be thorough in their approach to solving cases involving officers, even if emotions are high.
"When a police officer is killed, it's like a member of a family and then we all have families,” Schak said. "Illinois State Police, Elmwood Park, they’re all part of that same family. It affects all of us. It affects all of us."
