A woman was stabbed to death and an off-duty Chicago police detective suffered a graze wound when he tried to intervene in the attack in the Portage Park neighborhood on the Far Northwest Side Tuesday afternoon, authorities said.
Hours after the incident, Chicago police said the suspected killer was found dead in a vehicle near the crime scene.
In a news release, Chicago police said the detective, who works in the Harrison Area on the West Side, saw the woman being stabbed in the 5600 block of West Leland Avenue around 2:20 p.m. She was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. Her identity wasn’t released.
The unnamed detective was taken to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge in fair condition with a graze wound to the leg and a third person left the scene, according to Chicago Fire Department spokesman Lawrence Langford.
Late Tuesday night, police said that the suspect, who fled the scene, was found dead in a vehicle about a block east of where the woman was killed. A minivan was visible on the 5500 block of West Leland Avenue with all of its doors open, cordoned off on both sides of the street with crime scene tape. The suspect’s identity was not immediately released.
At the original crime scene, a red switchblade lay in the middle of the residential street around 3:30 p.m. as an evidence marker sat next to a pool of blood on the south sidewalk as officers spoke to neighbors on their front stairs.
A neighbor who said he lived on the next block north said he heard four shots. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability has opened an investigation into the shooting, police said, and the detective would be placed on desk duty for 30 days.
Originally Published:
