CHICAGO — Prosecutors opened the third day of trial for the man accused of killing Chicago Police officer Andrés Vásquez Lasso with the slain cop’s own body-worn camera footage that captured the moments just before his death.

Yelling and running steps could be heard from a television placed before the jury at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse Thursday morning before gunfire sounded. Raised hands holding a gun were visible on the video, which then abruptly tips to show the sky and bare trees.

After a few moments, the head of another officer appeared at the right-hand side of the screen, peering down. The officer could be heard yelling: “Come on, man! Hey, hey!”

Prosecutors showed the video twice Thursday, side by side with another officer’s body-worn camera footage.

After the initial sequence, the video begins to shake. The sound of heavy breathing and shouts of a “10-1,” shorthand for a call of an officer in distress, filled the courtroom.

The body camera was still recording when then-Lieutenant Patrick Kinney arrived at the scene.

Speaking in a loud, confident voice to the jury, Kinney, now a commander with the department’s Investigative Response Team, described recovering the body camera from 32-year-old Vásquez Lasso’s vest outside Sawyer Elementary School on the Southwest Side.

Kinney then walked through what he’d seen when he took the camera back to a mobile command van: a man in a black sweatshirt who appeared to be racking the slide on a gun.

Steven Montano, the man accused of killing Vásquez Lasso in an exchange of gunfire, faces charges of first-degree murder and other felonies in connection with the officer’s death.

Vásquez Lasso and other officers were dispatched to the 5200 block of South Spaulding Avenue after Montano’s girlfriend allegedly called 911 to report that he threatened her with a gun, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said shortly after Montano, now 21, was arrested that he had jumped out the window to escape arriving officers, who chased him to an area near a playground where Montano was wounded and Vásquez Lasso was killed.

Most of Thursday’s trial proceedings consisted of testimony from a number of officials from CPD and state law enforcement agencies who handle body-worn camera footage and other evidence collected from the scene of Vásquez Lasso’s death. Jurors had previously seen footage from other officers who responded to the scene alongside Vásquez Lasso, but had not watched the shooting from his own camera.

On Wednesday, Miguel Enciso, Vásquez Lasso’s partner, testified that the suspect yelled at him “kill me” in the first chaotic moments after the shooting. Montano was shot in the chin, while Vásquez Lasso was hit three times in the head, arm and leg.

Montano’s attorneys have said they expect he will testify in his own defense, which is expected to come on the final day of testimony Friday. They have argued that he had a “most unfortunate reaction” to a stressful situation and told the jury to keep an open mind about the case, the first involving a slain police officer to come before a jury since one of Officer Ella French’s killers was convicted at trial last year.

____

©2025 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.