City Council panel rejects $8.25 million settlement in innocent woman's death during crash in high-speed chase of stolen car

The City Council Finance Committee on Wednesday voted down a recommendation from city attorneys to pay a $8.25 million settlement in a high-speed police chase that led to the death of an innocent woman in a car crash in the Little Village neighborhood.

The 18-15 vote against the proposed settlement for the family of 55-year-old Dominga Flores Gomez means the wrongful death lawsuit against the city likely will now go to trial, unless a majority of the full City Council votes to override the Finance Committee's decision, or the city and Gomez's family reach a lower settlement that aldermen find more acceptable.

Gomez was killed in a crash at the intersection of 31st and Kedzie on Sept. 28, 2022, as police were chasing a group of carjacking suspects.

Chicago Deputy Corporation Counsel Maggie Mendenhall Casey told aldermen the chase spanned 11 miles and reached speeds of up to 95 mph on city streets, where the speed limit is typically 30 mph.

The officer who led the chase ran 20 red lights and several stop signs during the pursuit, and had been involved in three previous chases that ended in crashes, including one just 10 days before Gomez's death. He had been suspended three times for a total of six days before that crash for violating Chicago Police Department policies regarding car chases, according to Casey.

CPD policy requires officers to conduct a balancing test before initiating a vehicle chase to "consider the need for immediate apprehension of an eluding suspect and the requirement to protect the public from the danger created by eluding offenders."

That officer who led the chase that ended in Gomez's death is a defendant in two other pending lawsuits against the city stemming from crashes during police pursuits.

Hours before the crash that killed Gomez, four people carjacked a woman near 34th Street and Claremont Avenue in McKinley Park, just off the Stevenson Expressway, according to police. Next, they carjacked another woman about two miles north in Pilsen, in the 1900 block of West 21st Place, before returning to McKinley Park – this time at 3410 S. Leavitt St., about a block and a half from the first carjacking scene – where they tried to set fire to a pickup truck they had stolen earlier.

Police later spotted the stolen Honda, and chased the SUV into Little Village, where Vazquez crashed into Gomez's car. Police were able to arrest all four suspects, and recovered two weapons from their vehicle. 

Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th), who frequently votes against proposed settlements in lawsuits accusing police of misconduct, argued that police were justified in chasing Vazquez and the other carjacking suspects.

Lopez claimed Vazquez and his accomplices were solely responsible for Gomez's death, saying they "clearly have no regard for human life."

"He is the one who is responsible for this. He and his group are the ones attacking people, violently hijacking vehicles in Brighton Park or wherever they did this, and they are the ones that need to bear the burden of this," he said.

However, city attorneys have said that Vazquez, who pleaded guilty to reckless homicide in 2024 and is serving a 14-year prison sentence, has no assets to pay any damages to Gomez's family.

In other business, the Finance Committee on Wednesday unanimously approved $29.2 million in settlements in four lawsuits over wrongful convictions linked to disgraced former CPD Det. Reynaldo Guevara.

Guevara has been linked to dozens of overturned convictions, accused of repeatedly framing suspects who were later exonerated.

He has repeatedly refused to testify in cases where he was accused of beating suspects into false confessions. In one lawsuit involving Guevara, he asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to 200 questions.  

Guevara has never been charged with a crime and was never disciplined by the Chicago Police Department before he retired in 2005, allowing him to continue drawing a city pension. The CBS News Chicago investigators for years dug into the accusations of Guevara coercing false confessions as far back as the 1980s.