The cop killed during a weekend traffic stop in Chicago was a 29-year-old woman with three years on the force, according to police and social media.
Ella French was identified by the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police in a post on Facebook on Sunday morning — hours after city officials said she and another officer were hit by gunfire on the city’s South Side.
“Officer Ella French was murdered while conducting a traffic stop with her partners,” according to the post on the page of Chicago FOP Lodge No. 7, the city’s largest police union.
French, who has yet to be identified by city officials, had been with the Chicago Police Department since April 2018, CPD Superintendent David Brown said.
Brown said French’s mother requested that her name not be released.
The other shot cop is fighting for his life in the hospital, authorities said.
According to police accounts, French and two other officers had just stopped a vehicle at 63rd Street and Bell Avenue when one of its three passengers began firing. Officers returned fire, injuring one of the passengers, while the two cops were shot.
All three suspects were apprehended, but their names have not been released. One member of the group had an 2019 robbery on his criminal record, which is “not extensive,” Brown told reporters.
“It seems that neither of the three offenders have extensive [criminal] background,” he said.
French is the first Chicago police officer killed since Lightfoot became mayor of the city in 2019, but the city’s cops have faced a surge of gunfire in the past two years.
Thirty-eight officers have been shot or shot at so far 2021, according to CPD stats.
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