CHICAGO – The Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) has released videos and other materials detailing the shooting by an off-duty Chicago police officer of a murderous man in Portage Park in November.
On Nov. 19 around 2:23 p.m., Officer Chris Matias was walking in the 5800 block of West Leland when he witnessed the attack of Constantin Beldie, 57, who attacked and fatally stabbed Beldie’s estranged wife, 54-year-old Lacramioara “Mirela” Beldie. to a CPD statement and public records.
Matias approached Beldie and fired his weapon, hitting Beldie, who fled the scene, COPA said in a press release today. Video shows Matias chasing Beldie, who climbs into a minivan. He drove away and was found dead in the car a short distance away. Matias was also injured. CPD said he had been shot, but COPA said Thursday only that he “suffered an injury.”
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office determined that Beldie committed suicide by inhaling exhaust fumes from his vehicle in the 5700 block of West Giddings.
COPA released six videos of the incident. The following clip is a compilation of two of those videos where Matias shoots Beldie and confronts him as he tries to escape.
You can watch the full videos and other material released by COPA here.
Court records show prosecutors asked a judge to keep Beldie in custody about a month before he killed his wife, after charging him with kidnapping and aggravated domestic battery by strangulation for allegedly attacking her in October . But the judge overseeing the case, Thomas Nowinski, denied their request for detention.
Instead, Nowinski released Beldie on a GPS tracker and told him to stay away from his wife and certain locations, records show. His wife received an emergency order of protection against her husband the same day.
According to the October charges, Beldie grabbed Mirela as she walked and tried to knock her unconscious. In several court filings, Mirela has detailed a series of violent allegations involving her husband, including multiple threats that he would kill her.
About a week after the murder, Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans announced that Nowinski was no longer pursuing “domestic violence or protective orders” in light of “anonymous threats” Nowinski had received since his ruling in the Beldie case made headlines .
Days before Evans announced the changes to Nowinski’s duties, CWBChicago reported that Nowinski denied detention requests 60% of the time between mid-October and mid-November.
During that period, we found 85 cases in which prosecutors asked Nowinski to detain a suspect. He approved only 34 of those petitions, or 40%. By comparison, a group of judges handling similar domestic cases during weekend court hearings granted petitions 57% of the time during the same period.
In the month after Nowinski’s reinstatement, judges who began carrying out his former duties granted 56% of all detention requests, CWBChicago reported. That’s much higher than Nowinski’s 40% and virtually identical to the 57% awarded by weekend judges in our previous analysis.
Three of the four justices granted more than 60% of the detention requests presented to them: Torrie Corbin, Sabra Ebersole and Elizabeth Ryan. Judge Michael Hogan, who heard 43 of the 87 cases, awarded only 51%.
