Nov. 13--The off-duty Chicago police officer wounded along with her daughter is a "tough cookie" who wanted to be a cop since she was 10, her ex-husband said Wednesday.
"When she was on the streets, she was a tough cookie," Ray Ramirez said of Officer Samella Ramirez, a 24-year veteran who has received 24 departmental awards. "She didn't back down from anything and she got her share of accolades."
The officer was at her daughter's home in the 2200 block of East 68th Street Tuesday night when the daughter's former boyfriend approached and started arguing, according to police. The man pulled out a gun and opened fire, striking Ramirez several times in the face, neck and both arms and hitting the daughter in the thigh, police said.
The man then fled in a black Impala with the couple's 2-year-old son. He was arrested about three hours later on the Near North Side and the boy was found unharmed, police said.
Ramirez, 49, and her daughter, 21, were both taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where Ramirez was in critical but stable condition and her daughter was stable, according to police.
Jimmie Tyler, 66, and his wife were in bed in their first-floor condo when they heard 10 to 12 gunshots. He said there were intervals between the shots.
"I (wanted) to get up and she snatched me back and told me I wasn't going no place," Tyler said in a telephone interview.
When the gunfire was over, Tyler said he went to his front window and saw the officer lying on the curb, bleeding and crying for help. He said he called 911.
Tyler said his wife Sherry was going to go out and help the wounded officer, but police arrived.
Tyler didn't know the victim was a police officer until he spoke with his third-floor neighbor, an officer with the Cook County sheriff's department who is the father of the 21-year-old woman. Reached by the Tribune at the South Shore condo building, the sheriff's officer declined to comment
Ramirez, the wounded officer's ex-husband, called the shooting "a horrible tragedy."
"The only bright part of this is that he (the toddler) is OK," Ramirez said. "Who knows what could have happened to that child?"
