AVONDALE — An off-duty police officer hospitalized after someone shot her during a “road rage incident” last week is no longer working for the department, police officials said Tuesday.
The 27-year-old woman had been with the department less than year before she was shot in the face Sept. 20, police said. She was driving in the 3600 block of North Elston Avenue around 3:20 p.m. that day when someone in an SUV in front of her stopped suddenly and shot at her, Supt. David Brown said at the time.
No one else was in the car with the woman during the shooting, and she did not fire or show a gun prior to being shot, Brown previously said. She was taken to Illinois Masonic Hospital with non-life-threatening wounds, officials said.
The Sun-Times reported the woman was a probationary officer who graduated from the police academy in May. She was stripped of her police powers Sept. 17 after failing a drug test and was later fired, the Sun-Times reported, citing a source.
It was not immediately clear if the woman was still an officer on the day she was shot.
In a statement, a police spokesman confirmed the woman is no longer a member of the department but did not answer questions about the drug test, when the officer stopped working for the department or if she was fired from the job.
“We do not discuss personnel matters beyond that,” the police statement said.
After the shooting, responding officers tried to stop the SUV driver in the 5000 block of West Lawrence Avenue, but the driver crashed into two squad cars and took off, police previously said. An officer shot at the SUV as the driver left, police said.
No one was injured in the crash and gunfire on Lawrence Avenue, police said.
Northeastern Illinois University police officers found the SUV unoccupied in the 5800 block of North Drake Avenue, police said. The investigation is ongoing and no arrests had been made as of Tuesday, police said.
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