A Chicago police officer described as someone “trying to make a change on this Earth” and to show “young people that policing is a profession that can make a difference in the community” was shot to death early Saturday near her home in Avalon Park on the city’s South Side.
Areanah Preston, 24, was getting home from work when she was shot at about 1:42 a.m. in the 8100 block of South Blackstone Avenue, according to the Chicago police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
The shooting happened during a stickup that might be related to another nearby robbery, according to law enforcement sources, who said Preston’s gun was taken. Police radio traffic shows the city’s gunshot-detection system ShotSpotter registered nine rounds in the area.
An Apple Watch later indicated there was a traffic crash in the block at about 2:02 a.m. and called 911, according to radio traffic. At about 2:15 a.m. — more than 30 minutes after the shooting — a responding officer reported Preston had been shot.
“We got a person shot,” the officer could be heard saying over the radio. “It’s an off-duty [police officer]. Get an ambulance here now.”
The officer ultimately put Preston in a police vehicle and rushed her to the University of Chicago Medical Center where she was pronounced dead, according to the police, who said no arrests have been made.
Preston, who worked in the Calumet District, has been with the Chicago Police Department for three years.
Her father Allen Preston, who lives in Los Angeles, said he hadn’t heard details about what happened but said: “She was trying to make a change on this Earth. It’s unforgivable, in my eyes.”
Preston described his daughter as a “beautiful soul” who “always saw the best in people” and had long desired to become a cop. To him, her calling seemed more like destiny since he and his ex-wife had a police escort to the hospital before she was born.
Still, he had concerns about the dangers of the job, even though she followed “half” her family into the profession.
“This was my baby, everything I did was for her,” he said. “I don’t know what to do right now. … I’ll be dealing with this for the rest of my life.”
She’s also survived by her mother and younger twin sisters.
More than a dozen family members gathered Saturday outside Preston’s home. A few police officers parked nearby and joined a vigil.
Preston’s aunt Sonia Rawsk said she was a “wonderful” person with a bright future.
“She was a definite role model with a career path that just didn’t stop,” Rawsk said.
Preston was soon to graduate with a master’s degree in criminology from Loyola University Chicago, her family said. She previously earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and law enforcement administration from Illinois State University, where she met professor Charles Bell.
She was a “very engaged, very vocal student, very respectful of others’ opinion and just very passionate about making a difference and showing young people that policing is a profession that can make a difference in the community,” Bell said. “She was very aware of a lot of the problems that in her opinion had manifested in the Chicago community.”
He said the young officer was still working in patrol but “was looking forward to moving up in the ranks.”
“She was a reformer,” he said. “She saw a problem, and she was dedicated to making a difference.”
After a class trip to Holocaust sites in Germany and Poland in 2019, Preston said in an article published on the school website that she was determined to enter the police academy to help build trust between underrepresented communities and law enforcement.
“I know a big thing for our trip was finding voices for those who didn’t have a voice,” Preston said. “When I got back, I wanted to be an officer. I felt like I could be a person to fight for justice.”
At a news conference outside the hospital Saturday, a tearful Mayor Lori Lightfoot sent her condolences to the officer’s “shattered” family.
“When I got the call this morning, I wasn’t just a mayor. I was a mom,” Lightfoot said. “I’m thinking about what the parents of this young officer are going to be feeling today.”
Interim police Supt. Eric Carter Carter’s daughter attended high school with Preston at UIC College Prep, and his wife coached their cheerleading team.
Carter asked for prayers for the officer, her family and “the men and women of the Chicago Police Department who sacrifice everything, including their lives.”
Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson called the shooting “a profound tragedy. My heart breaks for the family of the young officer who was murdered early this morning on her way home from work. I’m outraged and devastated by this horrific violence against a public servant, and I will do everything I can to support her family and the Chicago Police Department through this traumatic time. I pray that her killer is apprehended quickly so that justice may be served.”
Johnson said the overnight attack “underlines the fierce urgency of the public safety crisis in our city.”
The shooting happened just over two months after Officer Andrés Mauricio Vásquez Lasso was killed in the line of duty. He was shot near a Gage Park elementary school on March 1 as he chased an armed suspect who had threatened his girlfriend. Steven Montano, 19, was arrested soon after and charged in the killing and is being held without bail at the Cook County Jail pending trial.
Other alleged cop killers have taken longer to apprehend.
Officer Michael Ray Bailey Sr. was killed in July 2010 during an attempted carjacking after ending his shift on a mayoral protection detail for then-Mayor Richard M. Daley. Anton Carter was arrested a year later, but he wasn’t tried until nearly a decade later, in 2019.
