A woman initially accused of trying to murder a Chicago police officer during a 2023 South Side confrontation has pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and been sentenced to seven years.
Resendez, 41, was charged with attempted murder in connection with the September 2, 2023, encounter in the 9900 block of South Ewing. But officials never publicly accused her of firing directly at the officers. The confrontation was captured on both officers’ body-worn cameras and a city surveillance camera.
Video released by COPA, shared at the end of this story, shows Resendez and another person walking down the middle of the street before moving toward the sidewalk as a CPD squad car approached. The officers drove alongside Resendez for a short distance before getting out of the squad car to speak with her.
As one officer told her, “Lemme see your hands,” Resendez turned and pointed a firearm toward the officer, according to the officer’s bodycam video. Two shots were then heard, prompting the officers to take cover. The video does not establish who fired the shots, but CPD said Resendez “produced a firearm and later admitted to pulling the trigger in the direction of a Chicago Police officer.”
A preliminary statement from COPA said Resendez “turned and pointed a firearm in the direction of the officers” and “both officers then discharged their firearms.”
Police recovered Resendez’s phone, a pistol, and a can bearing her fingerprints along the route she took after the confrontation, prosecutors said, leading to her identification. She was arrested weeks later.
On Thursday, Resendez pleaded guilty to attempted aggravated discharge of a firearm toward an occupied vehicle in exchange for the seven-year sentence from Judge James Obbish, court records show. The charge, attempted discharge, may explain why both CPD and COPA specifically avoided saying that Resendez’s gun fired when she pulled the trigger.
She has amassed 1,593 days of credit during the roughly three years she spent in the Cook County Jail. That credit will be applied toward her sentence.
