The Chicago Police Department has begun circulating photographs of a person of interest detectives are seeking to identify as they investigate the weekend slaying of Officer Luis Huesca, who was shot to death in the Gage Park neighborhood as he drove home from work.
An internal alert asks department members to help identify a male “subject” sought in relation to the attack in the 3100 block of West 56th Street, where Huesca was targeted just a couple blocks from where he lived. The individual is seen wearing different clothing in two photos that appear to have been taken from private security cameras. The alert notes that he “should be considered armed and dangerous,” but acknowledges that detectives have “no probable cause to arrest at this time.”
Huesca was driving home from work in his police uniform around 2:55 a.m. Sunday when he was targeted just a couple blocks from where he lived, according to information released by the department and the Cook County medical examiner’s office. He was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, authorities have said.
Although the city’s ShotSpotter gunshot detection system registered only four rounds, law enforcement sources said roughly 30 gunshots were fired. The officer’s gun and police badge weren’t found at the scene, and his SUV was later recovered nearby.
Officer Luis Huesca, a six-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department, was a police academy classmate of Officer Andres Vasquez-Lasso, who was killed in the line of duty last year.
During a news conference outside the hospital Sunday morning, police Supt. Larry Snelling told reporters that Huesca had been with the police department for six years and was just two days away from his 31st birthday.
“We lost one of our own today,” Snelling told reporters. “He was just a great officer, great human being.”
After meeting with Huesca’s mother and uncle, Mayor Brandon Johnson on Sunday described the shooting as “an act of unconscionable gun violence in our city.”
“My Office of Community Safety, in collaboration with Supt. Larry Snelling and the Chicago Police Department, is committed to putting every resource available toward apprehending anyone involved in this morning’s shooting and bringing them to justice.”
Anonymous tips can be submitted at CPDTIP.com.
