More than two months after a postal worker was shot to death on the city’s South Side, authorities said they had tracked down her killer in another state. The suspected murderer is a 15-year-old boy. Police say he was arrested Monday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, after being identified as the person who shot and killed 48-year-old Octavia Redmond on July 19 in the West Pullman neighborhood.
The news of Octavia Redmond’s imprisonment shook her friends and family. They said they haven’t stopped thinking about Redmond, who was a familiar and friendly figure at the Far South Side post office where she worked. Everyone still wants to know why Redmond was shot and murdered, and her colleagues say they are still lobbying for letter carrier safety reforms.
“Now we’ve got to relive it again,” said Elise Foster, head of the National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 11.
Foster said she received a call concerning an arrest early Tuesday morning. “I talked to her husband, Demetrius Redmond,” she told me. “That was my first call, letting him know that my heart goes out to him, and, you know, this is a step in the right direction.” Redmond was shot multiple times while delivering mail near 121st and Harvard around 11:40 a.m. on Saturday, July 19. She was transported to Advocate Christ Medical Centre in Oak Lawn, where she was pronounced dead.
The shooter’s getaway vehicle was later discovered abandoned and burned during a field in the 8900 block of South Holland Road. In August, authorities released surveillance camera footage of the shooting, which showed the shooter entering a stolen Dodge Durango in the 7000 block of South Campbell Avenue before to the shooting. A second video footage showed a man exiting the Durango between 121st and Harvard, fleeing across the street and out of view of the camera, and then returning to the vehicle before driving away.
