The armed parolee whom Chicago Police Officer Krystal Rivera was chasing when her partner unintentionally shot and killed her last year received an eight-year sentence on Thursday after he pleaded guilty to one of the least-serious charges that prosecutors filed against him, court records show.
Jaylin Arnold, 28, pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a weapon with two or more previous gun convictions in exchange for the sentence from Judge Barbara Dawkins. Dawkins handed him a concurrent three-year sentence for a narcotics count. Prosecutors dropped 90 other felony counts, including 65 Class X charges, the most serious felonies in Illinois short of murder.
With the state’s standard 50% sentence reduction and credit for 333 days he spent in jail awaiting trial, Arnold will likely be paroled in three years and one month.
On June 5, 2025, Arnold was on parole for being a felon in possession of a firearm, his third gun conviction, when Rivera and her partner, Carlos Baker, allegedly saw him with a firearm and an extended magazine in his waistband near the 8200 block of South Drexel Avenue.
Rivera and Baker chased him into a nearby apartment building as he ran into an apartment. When Baker forced open the apartment door, officials said, he was immediately confronted by a second man who was pointing a firearm directly at him.
Bodycamera video released last week by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability appears to show Baker simultaneously retreating from the doorway, losing his balance, and firing a single shot that struck Rivera in an area of her torso not protected by her ballistic vest.
Baker, who has told investigators he thought the gunshot came from inside the apartment and not from his service weapon, took cover by running up a stairwell and called for backup. Some 90 seconds later, he found Rivera’s body lying on the landing outside the apartment.
The story told by the bodycam footage conflicts with the version of events originally provided by officials who said Baker shot Rivera as she chased Arnold down a hallway inside the apartment.
Arnold got away that night, but CPD arrested him two weeks after the initial confrontation. In a detention filing, prosecutors said he was seen on video possessing a firearm with an extended magazine and narcotics multiple times during their investigation of Rivera’s death.
The man accused of pointing the firearm at Baker from inside the apartment, Adrian Rucker, is still in custody awaiting trial.
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