4-Apr-19 – A third man has been charged in connection with the March 23 shooting that killed off-duty Chicago police officer John Rivera and injured another man in River North.

Police say 22-year-old Jaquan Washington (left) of the New City neighborhood southwest of the Loop has been charged with one felony count of first-degree murder and three felony counts of attempted first-degree murder.

Washington was taken into custody on Tuesday after being identified as one of the men who fired into Rivera’s car in the 700 block of North Clark Street at around 3:25 a.m., wrongly believing the occupants had been involved in an earlier altercation at a nearby McDonald’s.

Rivera was killed and his friend was critically wounded in the shooting. Another off-duty officer and Rivera’s girlfriend, who were also in the vehicle, escaped injury.

CPD records show that Washington was charged last June with being a felon in possession of a firearm. The outcome of that case was not immediately available. He was in bond court on Wednesday.

Previously charged in the case were 32-year-old Jovan Battle (near right) and 24-year-old Menelik Jackson.

Jackson had been on electronic monitoring and had a 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew – as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors for two incidents – but was released from the restrictions just two weeks before the shooting in River North.

Charged with home invasion, threatening woman and baby

On July 3, 2017, armed with a loaded handgun, Jackson allegedly broke into his ex-girlfriend’s home, despite a no-contact order resulting from a previous incident. He brandished the weapon and threatened to kill both the woman and the couple’s four-month-old child. He was arrested at a pre-hiring screening appointment at the CPD Recruit Academy and charged with Class X home invasion with firearm, residential burglary, and two counts of aggravated unlawful use of weapon.

Four months earlier, when the woman was living with Jackson, he allegedly grabbed her by the throat and punched her in the head, then placed a loaded nine-millimeter handgun on a bed, pointed at their newborn baby. Jackson was charged with domestic battery and causing a child to be endangered.

Unable to pay a $50,000 bond, Jackson sat in jail until last August, when a plea agreement for both incidents was reached and the charges were reduced to domestic battery, child endangerment, and attempted burglary.

Circuit Judge Ursula Walowski (left) sentenced Jackson to 30 months of “intensive probation,” fined him $500, ordered him to submit a DNA sample, and issued a protective order that barred him from having a gun and contacting his victims.

Jackson was ordered to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet and observe a 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew but, say prosecutors, he allowed his monitoring system’s batteries to drain.

He was in court on March 8 to face a violation of probation motion. However, Associate Judge Joseph Claps terminated Jackson’s electronic monitoring and curfew. The murder of police officer Rivera happened two weeks later.