A Cook County jury on Tuesday found a man guilty of murder in the shooting death of an off-duty Chicago police officer in River North in 2019, according to court records.
Menelik Jackson, 29, was convicted of murder and aggravated battery in the fatal shooting of Officer John Rivera, 23, which also injured another man, following a jury trial that began last week.
Rivera was sitting in a parked car in the the 700 block of North Clark Street with at least one other off-duty officer when assailants walked up and fired into the vehicle, killing Rivera and wounding another occupant of the car, police said.
Rivera, a resident of the Hegewisch neighborhood on the Far South Side who had almost reached two years on the force, was described by colleagues as a hard-working officer who “loved going out on patrol.”
Rivera and his three companions had been at Stout Barrel House & Pizzeria, 642 N. Clark St., before the shooting, then-Superintendent Eddie Johnson said at the time.
“They were all friends going out to have a good time,’’ Johnson said of the group.
Jaquan Washington, a co-defendant, entered a guilty plea last year, but has not yet been sentenced. A third defendant, Jovan Battle, was convicted of murder by a jury in 2019 and sentenced to 65 years in prison, though he is fighting the conviction.