A 23-year-old off-duty police officer was ambushed and shot to death after leaving a nightclub in Chicago, according to officials

• A 23-year-old off-duty Chicago police officer was shot and killed early Saturday morning while leaving a nightclub.
• Another victim, an unidentified man who was not a police officer, is in critical condition. Police say he is in surgery and expected to survive.
• Police say the shooting appears to be random: "We know that they did not have any sort of confrontations with anybody, they did not have any incidents that we believe would have provoked any sort of shooting."
• The police officer, who was later identified as John P. Rivera, had just finished a shift earlier that evening.

In what appears to be a random attack, a 23-year-old off-duty Chicago police officer was shot and killed after leaving a nightclub early Saturday morning. He was shot in the mouth, chest, and right arm, later pronounced dead at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

The officer — who was later identified as John P. Rivera — was seated in a car with three other people when they were ambushed by two unidentified men, police said. One man fired shots into the car, striking the officer and one other victim, before fleeing on foot.

 

The second victim, an unidentified man who is not a police officer, is in critical condition. Police say he is undergoing surgery and is expected to survive.

The two other people in the car, including another off-duty officer, were not injured.

Rivera — who would have been with the department for two years in May — had just finished a shift around 9 or 10 p.m. on Friday night. Police say he went to the nightclub purely for pleasure and they currently have no suspected motive for the shooting.

"We know that they did not have any sort of confrontations with anybody, they did not have any incidents that we believe would have provoked any sort of shooting," Police Deputy Supt. Anthony Riccio said during a press conference outside the hospital.

Rivera and the shooter had "no conflict... no problems, no words exchanged, there was no robbery demand, no carjacking demand," Riccio said.

The shooter is still at large, though police say they do have a person of interest in custody.

 

"It's a very sad day, we're mourning the loss of yet another Chicago police officer," Fraternal Order of Police President Kevin Graham said during the press conference.

The Chicago Police Department did not immediately return INSIDER's request for comment.

According to The Chicago Tribune, over 343 people have been shot in the city so far in 2019. This falls below the rate of shootings in the city for the previous three years.

This post has been updated with the name of the police officer who was killed.

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