Iowa teen charged with murder of Illinois mail carrier

According to Chicago police and law enforcement, the boy allegedly shot 48-year-old Octavia Redmond of the Loop near the intersection of South Harvard Avenue and West 122nd Street several times at close range around 11:40 a.m. on July 19, while Redmond delivered mail Postal Service Enforcement Agency.

“Redmond was a wife and mother and was considered an important person to the postal customers she served,” the Postal Service said in a news release Tuesday.

A joint investigation by the Postal Service and the Chicago Police Department identified the boy, who was not named, as a suspect in the murder.

Chicago police and a U.S. Marshals Service fugitive squad captured the boy on Monday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He was extradited to Chicago and subsequently charged with first-degree murder, authorities said.

The postal service said the boy got out of a stolen white Dodge Durango before approaching Redmond and shooting her. The boy fled the scene in the SUV, which was found by police the day after the shooting.

Redmond was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where she was pronounced dead, police said.

On the day of the shooting, those who lived near the crime scene described Redmond as a good-natured and friendly mailman.

“She was a really nice woman,” said resident Todd Lindberg, 56. “(She) did her job. “She would go out of her way. If a letter came in after she passed your house, she would have come back.

Mail carriers in the Chicago area have raised concerns about their safety as armed robberies of package and arrow key delivery workers have skyrocketed in recent years.

“There is no place for this type of senseless violence,” Ruth M. Mendonça, inspector in charge of the Chicago Division of the Postal Service’s Law Enforcement Division, said in the Postal Service’s news release. “When members of our postal family are targeted, postal inspectors will not rest until justice is served on behalf of the victims, their families and our postal community.”