Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-19-01435/USCOURTS-ca7-19-01435-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
City of Chicago
Appellee
Monica Reyes
Appellee
Francis Valadez
Appellee
Rachel Ybarra
Appellant

Document Text:

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 19-1435 

RACHEL YBARRA, as Special Administrator of the Estate of

RAFAEL CRUZ, deceased, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., 

Defendants-Appellees. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. 

No. 16-cv-08009 — Virginia M. Kendall, Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED DECEMBER 4, 2019 — DECIDED JANUARY 3, 2020 

____________________ 

Before FLAUM, RIPPLE, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges. 

FLAUM, Circuit Judge. Rachel Ybarra brought a lawsuit 

against the City of Chicago and Chicago Police Department 

Commander Francis Valadez and Officer Monica Reyes for 

excessive force and wrongful death based on the shooting 

death of her son, Rafael Cruz. The district court entered summary judgment for the defendants, holding that the officers 

could have reasonably believed, based on Cruz’s involvement 

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in a drive-by shooting and extremely reckless driving, that 

Cruz posed an imminent threat to others if allowed to escape 

from the parking lot where they shot him. 

We affirm. Under the circumstances present in this case, 

the officers had probable cause to believe that Cruz posed a 

threat of serious physical harm to others in the immediate vicinity. It was therefore not unreasonable for the officers to prevent Cruz’s escape by using deadly force. 

I. Background 

During the early hours of August 29, 2015, Chicago Police 

Department Commander Francis Valadez and Officer Monica 

Reyes (collectively, “the officers”) were in an unmarked police car patrolling a neighborhood where a gang-related 

shooting had recently occurred. At approximately 1:30 a.m., 

the officers saw a rear passenger in Rafael Cruz’s Chevy Tahoe fire five gunshots at the occupants of another car. Immediately after the shooting, Cruz drove away, reaching speeds 

of 40 to 70 miles per hour in a 30-miles-per-hour zone. Reyes 

called in an emergency, reporting “shots fired” over the police 

radio. Valadez was driving and followed Cruz’s Tahoe, which 

had dark, tinted windows. The officers followed Cruz’s Tahoe 

through city streets for approximately one mile but did not 

activate any emergency lights or sirens on their vehicle. 

With the unmarked police car still following him, Cruz 

turned westbound and struck a parked car on the north side 

of the street with enough force that it pushed the car forward 

into a second car parked roughly a car-length in front of it, 

causing the second car to roll into a third. Despite that collision, Cruz kept driving before crashing into a fourth car on 

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No. 19-1435 3

the south side of the street and coming to a stop near the entrance of a parking lot. 

At that point, the officers parked their car behind Cruz’s 

Tahoe, believing that it had stalled due to the damage it had 

sustained during the collisions. Valadez then began getting 

out of the car while announcing that he was a police officer. 

Almost simultaneously, Cruz put his Tahoe into reverse, forcing Valadez back into his car just before the back of the Tahoe 

struck the driver’s side of the car. The collision forced the 

open driver’s side door closed and caused the officers’ “whole 

car” to “rock[].” Reyes thought that Valadez had been hit by 

the Tahoe and was concerned that he may have been severely 

injured in the seconds following the collision. Cruz then 

pulled forward and turned left into the parking lot. 

The officers followed Cruz into the parking lot on foot, 

wearing plain clothes, duty belts, and bulletproof police vests 

that displayed their police star. Valadez ran to the south side 

of the parking lot, while Reyes positioned herself behind a 

parked car near the parking lot’s entrance. Valadez testified 

that he shouted “police” while running into the parking lot. 

The parking lot was “pretty well lit” by lights in the lot and at 

the adjacent intersection. One of Cruz’s passengers, Pasqual 

Nava, testified that he knew that Valadez was a police officer 

because he could see Valadez’s vest. Reyes also yelled several 

times to “stop the vehicle” and “stop it.” Two of Cruz’s passengers, Jose Cabello and Pasqual Nava, did not hear Valadez 

or Reyes say anything. 

Cruz did not stop and instead made a three-point turn 

back toward the parking lot’s entrance, which was the only 

path for vehicles to enter or exit the parking lot. The headlights of Cruz’s Tahoe shone directly at Valadez and then at 

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Reyes as Cruz completed his three-point turn and pulled forward. Valadez initially stated that as the Tahoe began driving 

forward, he saw the driver’s window being lowered two to 

three inches and believed that Cruz was about to begin shooting at him. Video footage, however, showed that the window 

may have already been rolled down before Cruz’s Tahoe entered the parking lot. 

As Cruz began driving forward, Valadez fired three shots 

at Cruz, and Reyes immediately thereafter fired five additional shots at him. The officers continued shooting after the 

Tahoe had driven past Reyes. Reyes testified that she could 

see Cruz’s profile as he drove past her. Reyes called out over 

the radio, “Shots fired by police, shots fired by police.” Cruz 

died as a result of a gunshot wound. 

Approximately ninety seconds elapsed from the time the 

initial shots were fired from Cruz’s Tahoe until Cruz was 

shot, roughly sixteen of which elapsed during the encounter 

in the parking lot. Surveillance footage shows that pedestrians, cyclists, and other vehicles were in the area within twenty 

minutes of the incident. 

Ybarra, Cruz’s mother and administrator for his estate, 

filed suit, bringing claims against the officers for excessive 

force under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and against the officers and the 

City of Chicago for wrongful death under Illinois law. The 

district court entered summary judgment for the defendants, 

holding that although there was a fact dispute as to whether 

the officers had acted reasonably in self-defense, they had 

acted reasonably in using deadly force against Cruz to protect 

others in the immediate vicinity by preventing his escape. 

Ybarra now appeals. 

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II. Discussion 

Construing all factual disputes and drawing all reasonable 

inferences in favor of Ybarra, we review de novo the district 

court’s entry of summary judgment for the defendants. Palmer 

v. Franz, 928 F.3d 560, 563 (7th Cir. 2019). The defendants are 

entitled to summary judgment only if they have shown “that 

there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact” and that 

they are “entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. 

P. 56(a). 

We conclude that the officers’ use of deadly force against 

Cruz was an objectively reasonable means to prevent the escape of armed and dangerous suspects who were driving 

with reckless disregard for the safety of others after firing 

gunshots at the occupants of another car moments earlier. “A 

police officer’s use of deadly force on a suspect is a seizure 

within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, so the force 

must be reasonable to be constitutional.” Horton v. Pobjecky, 

883 F.3d 941, 948 (7th Cir. 2018). A suspect has a constitutional 

right not to be shot by an officer unless the officer “reasonably 

believes that the suspect poses a threat to the officer or someone else.” Id. at 949 (citation and brackets omitted). 

When an officer reasonably believes an assailant’s actions place him, his partner, or those in 

the immediate vicinity in imminent danger of 

death or serious bodily injury, the officer can 

reasonably exercise the use of deadly force. An 

officer does not violate the Fourth Amendment 

by firing at a suspect when the officer reasonably believed that the suspect had committed a 

felony involving the threat of deadly force, was 

armed with a deadly weapon, and was likely to 

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pose a danger of serious harm to others if not 

immediately apprehended. 

Id. (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Under 

some circumstances, a police officer may therefore use deadly 

force as a reasonable means to prevent a suspect’s escape. 

Where the officer has probable cause to believe 

that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others, it is 

not constitutionally unreasonable to prevent escape by using deadly force. Thus, if the suspect 

threatens the officer with a weapon or there is 

probable cause to believe that he has committed 

a crime involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious physical harm, deadly force 

may be used if necessary to prevent escape, and 

if, where feasible, some warning has been given. 

Id. (quoting Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 11–12 (1985). 

Application of the reasonableness test “requires careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case, 

including the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or 

others, and whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.” Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 

396 (1989). “The ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force 

must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer 

on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.” 

Id. “The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance 

for the fact that police officers are often forced to make splitsecond judgments—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving—about the amount of force that is 

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necessary in a particular situation.” Id. at 396–97; see also Horton, 883 F.3d at 950 (reasonableness test requires considering 

“the pressures of time and duress, and the need to make splitsecond decisions under intense, dangerous, uncertain, and 

rapidly changing circumstances”). Unlike the court, the officers “lacked [the] luxury of pausing, rewinding, and playing 

the videos [of the incident] over and over.” Horton, 883 F.3d 

at 950. 

“[O]utrageously reckless driving” that “pose[s] a grave 

public safety risk” can be enough to justify the use of deadly 

force under some circumstances. Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 

765, 777 (2014) (reversing denial of summary judgment for officers who shot at fleeing suspect to end car chase); see also 

Scott v. Edinburg, 346 F.3d 752, 758–61 (7th Cir. 2003) (affirming summary judgment for defendants where officer shot at 

fleeing suspect who had stolen car and put others in vicinity 

at risk through dangerous driving). Here, there was more 

than Cruz’s extremely reckless driving to support the officers’ 

conclusion that Cruz presented a grave public safety risk. 

Cruz was not merely an impaired driver or someone driving away from a traffic ticket. After someone in his Tahoe 

fired multiple shots at another vehicle, Cruz sped away 

through city streets at roughly twice the speed limit, driving 

for a mile before crashing into multiple cars. First, he careened 

into a parked car with such force that it pushed the car forward into a second car parked a full car-length in front of it, 

which then rolled into a third. Despite the severity of that initial collision, Cruz did not stop. Cruz kept driving and 

crashed into a fourth car parked on the opposite side of the 

street. Then, when Valadez parked behind Cruz’s Tahoe, 

Cruz drove backward directly into the same car door from 

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which Valadez was attempting to exit. Cruz’s Tahoe crashed 

into the unmarked police car with enough force that it 

slammed Valadez’s door shut, caused the “whole car” to 

“rock[],” and led Reyes to believe that Valadez may have been 

seriously injured. 

During the encounter in the parking lot moments later, the 

officers reasonably believed that there was still at least one 

gun in Cruz’s Tahoe, that Cruz could access it, and that all of 

the suspects in the Tahoe might have been armed and dangerous. Cf. Horton, 883 F.3d at 952 (holding that officer reasonably assumed decedent was armed because of decedent’s participation in armed robbery). The situation was particularly 

difficult given that the officers could not see into the Tahoe to 

determine which occupant had the gun because the Tahoe 

had dark, tinted windows. Cf. Ford v. Childers, 855 F.2d 1271, 

1275 (7th Cir. 1988) (“Even though [the officer] did not actually see a weapon in the suspect’s hand (a post obstructed his 

view of the suspect’s hand), given the information he possessed at that particular time and the observations he made, 

[the officer] reasonably concluded that the suspect was armed 

and dangerous.”). Moreover, only sixteen seconds elapsed 

from when Valadez entered the parking lot (with Reyes trailing by a few seconds) until the Tahoe exited the parking lot, 

at which time Cruz had already been shot. Within that sixteen-second window, the officers had mere seconds to determine how to respond, and that determination was informed 

by the violent acts the officers had witnessed less than ninety 

seconds previously. 

Furthermore, it was reasonable for the officers to conclude 

that Cruz would have known that they were police officers 

rather than members of a rival gang. The officers entered the 

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parking lot, which was “pretty well lit” by lights in the parking lot and at the adjacent intersection, wearing duty belts and 

bulletproof vests that had their police star displayed on them. 

Both officers had also been illuminated by Cruz’s headlights. 

Indeed, Nava testified that he knew Valadez was a police officer because he could see his vest. Moreover, Valadez’s testimony that he identified himself as a police officer when he 

initially got out of his car (before it was struck by Cruz’s Tahoe) is unrebutted. 

The law requires that before using deadly force to prevent 

escape, the officers must, “where feasible,” give “some warning.” Horton, 883 F.3d at 949 (quoting Garner, 471 U.S. at 11–

12). The undisputed facts show that such a warning was given 

here. Nava testified that he was looking at Valadez immediately before Valadez began shooting, but that he never saw 

Valadez’s mouth move and that Valadez “never said ‘stop,’ 

never said nothing.” Regardless of whether Valadez yelled to 

“stop,” however, Reyes can be heard yelling at Cruz to “stop 

the vehicle” in the audio recorded by her police radio. There 

is no requirement that every officer on a scene shout duplicative commands. To the extent that the passengers in Cruz’s 

Tahoe could not hear the warnings, their testimony that they 

“did not hear any warnings fails to present a question of material fact as to whether the giving of the warnings was feasible and if in fact they were given.” Ford, 855 F.2d at 1276. 

Thus, when Cruz failed to stop after Reyes yelled at him 

to “stop the vehicle” but instead continued driving in Reyes’s 

general direction toward the parking lot exit, the officers had 

probable cause, based on Cruz’s involvement in the drive-by 

shooting and his extremely reckless driving, to believe that 

Cruz presented a threat of serious physical harm to others if 

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not immediately apprehended. Even though the encounter 

occurred during the very early hours of the morning, surveillance footage shows other pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists 

in the area around the time of the shooting. 

Regardless of whether the officers reasonably believed 

that Cruz presented a direct threat to the officers’ own 

safety—whether by driving toward or shooting at them—

there is no genuine dispute of material fact that the officers 

acted reasonably in using deadly force against Cruz to prevent his escape to protect others in the immediate vicinity. See 

Scott, 346 F.3d at 759 (“[T]he threatened individuals need not 

have been placed in the direct path of the threat. Deadly force 

may be exercised if the suspect’s actions place the officer, his 

partner, or those in the immediate vicinity in imminent danger 

of death or serious bodily injury.” (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)). Their use of deadly force to prevent 

escape continued to be reasonable even as Cruz drove past 

the officers. Cf. Horton, 883 F.3d at 952 (“Even if [a participant 

in an armed robbery] had already crawled past [the officer], it 

was still reasonable for [the officer] to shoot him in the back 

to prevent escape.”). 

For the same reasons that the officers’ use of deadly force 

was not an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment, their use of deadly force was justified under Illinois 

law. See Muhammed v. City of Chicago, 316 F.3d 680, 683 (7th 

Cir. 2002) (“The same [reasonable use of deadly force] rule 

applies to [plaintiff’s] wrongful death claim under Illinois 

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law.”).1 And under 745 Ill. Comp. Stat. 10/2-109, the City cannot be held vicariously liable when its individual officers are 

not liable. The defendants are therefore entitled to summary 

judgment on both the § 1983 claim and the wrongful death 

claim under Illinois law. 

III. Conclusion 

For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the judgment of the 

district court. 

 

1 Under 720 Ill. Comp. Stat. 5/7-5, an officer is justified in the use of 

deadly force in Illinois if: 

[H]e reasonably believes that such force is necessary to 

prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or such 

other person, or when he reasonably believes both that: 

(1) Such force is necessary to prevent the arrest 

from being defeated by resistance or escape; 

and 

(2) The person to be arrested has committed or 

attempted a forcible felony which involves 

the infliction or threatened infliction of great 

bodily harm or is attempting to escape by use 

of a deadly weapon, or otherwise indicates 

that he will endanger human life or inflict 

great bodily harm unless arrested without 

delay. 

Moreover, the Illinois Tort Immunity Act provides that a “public employee is not liable for his act or omission in the execution or enforcement 

of any law unless such act or omission constitutes willful and wanton conduct.” 745 Ill. Comp. Stat. 10/2-202. For the same reasons that the officers’ 

use of deadly force was reasonable as a matter of law, a jury could not 

conclude that their use of deadly force was willful and wanton. 

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HAMILTON, Circuit Judge, concurring in the judgment. I 

would affirm summary judgment on the narrower ground of 

qualified immunity on plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment claim. 

In briefing in this court, plaintiff effectively conceded that 

qualified immunity is appropriate. She described this case as 

straddling the “hazy border” between reasonable and unreasonable force. Appellant’s Reply Br. at 6. I agree, and we could 

and should stop there. See generally Pearson v. Callahan, 555 

U.S. 223, 241 (2009), citing among others Ashwander v. TVA, 

297 U.S. 288, 347 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring). I would not 

make my colleagues’ further finding that the officers did not 

violate the Fourth Amendment, particularly in light of the officers’ use of deadly force while driving an unmarked vehicle 

and wearing plain clothes. 

Driving the Tahoe when his passenger fired shots at another car, Cruz then fled recklessly from the shooting and 

from another car, the unmarked police car, that was chasing 

him at night. Under Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 11–12 

(1985), the Fourth Amendment generally permits police to use 

deadly force to prevent the escape of a suspect fleeing from 

such a violent crime, with the proviso that a warning should 

be given “if feasible.” We expect officers if feasible to give civilians a choice between surrender and death. 

The extensive case law concerning police use of force, and 

especially deadly force in police chases, almost always involves uniformed police officers and clearly marked police 

vehicles. Courts expect civilians to comply with police commands and warnings and to respect the authority of the police. Those expectations do not necessarily apply to police officers who are out of uniform in unmarked vehicles, however 

effective those tactics may be for particular police purposes. 

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The officers here were in plain clothes, not in uniform, and 

they were driving an unmarked car. Never in the ninety-second episode did the officers use the car’s hidden emergency 

lights or sirens. In reviewing a grant of summary judgment, 

we cannot assume Cruz knew he was being pursued by police 

officers during the chase or even during the fatal confrontation in the church parking lot. One passenger in Cruz’s car 

recognized from their gear that the people on foot in the parking lot were in fact police officers. Cruz and others may not 

have. The evidence of shouted warnings did not show beyond 

reasonable dispute that the officers could reasonably have expected the Tahoe’s driver to have heard them. 

We explained in Doornbos v. City of Chicago, 868 F.3d 572, 

585 (7th Cir. 2017), that with only rare exceptions, plainclothes 

officers may not initiate Fourth Amendment seizures without 

identifying themselves as police: “many civilians who would 

peaceably comply with a police officer’s order will understandably be ready to resist or flee when accosted—let alone 

grabbed—by an unidentified person who is not in a police officer’s uniform.” In Doornbos, we also summarized the special 

dangers posed by the use of force by plainclothes officers as 

reported in the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigations of 

the police departments in Chicago and other cities, highlighting Chicago’s “aggressive plainclothes policing practices that 

result in needless injuries.” Id. at 586–88 & n.4. There have 

been too many tragedies around the nation in which police 

officers have used deadly force against their own colleagues 

in plain clothes, often officers of color, in circumstances that 

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were “tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving,” to quote Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396 (1989).1 

 1 One study sponsored by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund and the Department of Justice identified 105 cases of intentional but mistaken shootings of officers by other officers, “many times” 

involving the intervention of plainclothes or off-duty officers. Nick Breul 

& Desiree Luongo, Making It Safer 64–66 (2017), 

https://cops.usdoj.gov/RIC/Publications/cops-w0858-pub.pdf. A New 

York state task force addressed the “special fear” experienced by officers 

of color encountering white officers while “out of uniform—off-duty, undercover, or in plainclothes.” Reducing Inherent Danger 1, N.Y. State Task 

Force on Police-on-Police Shootings (2010), https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/wiener/programs/pcj/files/Police-onPolice_Shootings_with_appendices.pdf. See also, e.g., Michael Wilson, Ali 

Watkins & Ali Winston, “Friendly Fire” Killing of Detective: 42 Shots, 7 Officers, 11 Seconds, N.Y. Times (Feb. 13, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/nyregion/nypd-cop-killed.html; WWJ, Detroit Cops 

Fight Each Other in “Embarrassing” Undercover Mix-Up, CBS Detroit (Nov. 

13, 2017), https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2017/11/13/detroit-police-undercover-mix-up; Associated Press, Black St. Louis Police Officer Shot by White 

Colleague “Fearing for His Safety”, The Guardian (June 24, 2017), 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/24/black-st-louis-policeofficer-shot-white-colleague; Matt Howerton, Cop Who Shot Fellow Officer: 

I Didn’t Know It Was You, KOAT (Apr. 1, 2016), https://www.koat.com/article/cop-who-shot-fellow-officer-i-didn-t-know-it-was-you/5070698; Meghan Keneally & Emily Shapiro, Maryland Cop Mistook Plainclothes Officer 

as “Threat” During Fatal Shooting, ABC News (Mar. 16, 2016), 

https://abcnews.go.com/US/maryland-cop-mistook-plainclothes-officerthreat-fatal-shooting/story?id=37699834; CBS & AP, Report Finds BART 

Cop Accidentally Shot, Killed Fellow Officer on Duty, CBS San Francisco (May 

30, 2014), https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/05/30/report-finds-bartcop-accidentally-shot-killed-fellow-officer-on-duty; Ann Mercogliano & 

Alice McQuillan, MTA Officer Who Shot Nassau Cop Is “Devastated”, NBC 

N.Y. (Mar. 12, 2011), https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nassaucounty-police-officer-killed/1939873. 

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Nevertheless, despite some factual disputes bearing on the 

ultimate reasonableness of the officers’ actions in this case, I 

would affirm summary judgment for the officers based on the 

doctrine of qualified immunity. As noted, plaintiff concedes 

that the officers’ conduct falls somewhere on the “hazy” borderline separating excessive and appropriate force. See Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 206 (2001), abrogated in nonrelevant 

part by Pearson, 555 U.S. at 227. And even if that were not so, 

plaintiff’s briefs failed to identify “a body of relevant case 

law” rendering the officers’ conduct clearly unconstitutional 

on the facts construed most favorably to her, and failed as 

well to persuade that this is an “obvious” case controlled directly by Garner and Graham. See Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 

194, 199 (2004). We should take the more conservative decisional route here by limiting our holding to the qualified immunity defense. 

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