A Chicago police officer was found not guilty on all counts Friday in the 2021 shooting death of the mother of his child.
Jurors filed into Judge Mary Brosnahan’s courtroom about 9:30 p.m., having reached their verdict in the trial of Pierre Tyler, 32, a tactical unit officer, after about four hours of deliberations. The courtroom gallery was nearly full despite the late hour. Tyler showed little emotion as the verdict was read.
After jurors filed out of the courtroom, Tyler’s family members hugged and wept, and the officer, who had been jailed since his arrest in 2021, pointed at his supporters as he stood flanked by sheriff’s officers.
“My heart goes out to the family of my granddaughter, but this was not going to fall on my son,” said Tyler’s mother Myrthis, who declined to provide her last name. “This is a horrible situation. I’ve got a granddaughter with no mother. But I knew my son.”
Jurors approached by the Chicago Sun-Times after court was adjourned declined to comment.
Earlier Friday, Tyler testified for about two hours, showing little emotion as he described an hours-long argument with his girlfriend, Andris Wofford, in December 2021 that ended with Wofford laying dead of a gunshot wound to the face.
Tyler claimed Wofford had picked up a gun he had left out on a table and pointed it at him, outraged because he believed he had concealed his marriage to another woman. Tyler said he tried to shove the gun away from him, and that the weapon went off.
Tyler then talked about what went through his mind as he looked down at Wofford laying on the floor, dead.
“As her arm goes up, the firearm goes off [and] her body fell in a forward-falling motion,” Tyler said. “At that point, I’m shocked. I can barely move.
“In that moment, panic set in. ... I felt nobody would believe me” that he hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger.
“I began to make a series of stupid, bad decisions in my panic,” he said in a halfhearted attempt to cover up the fact he had been at the scene.
Prosecutors accused Tyler of shooting Wofford during an argument on Dec. 8 when she confronted him about her belief that he was married to another woman with whom he also has children.
Tyler was the last witness called after four days of testimony.
Questioned by Tyler’s lawyer, Tim Grace, Tyler recalled Wofford and he had yelled at each other during a heated argument, with his “off-duty” pistol on a table in the apartment. Tyler said that he was putting on his holster as he prepared to leave, and when he looked back, he saw Wofford pointing the gun at him with her finger on the trigger.
Tyler said he reached for Wofford, and she jerked away, causing the gun to point toward her face as she pulled the trigger.
Tyler said he left the apartment with the gun and Wofford’s phone and keys, walking out the back door for fear someone heard the gunshot and might see him if he used the front door. In the hours that followed, Tyler sent text messages from Wofford’s phone to her friends and relatives, threw the gun away in a vacant lot and somehow — Tyler did not recall how— got rid of Wofford’s phone and keys.
Wofford’s body was found by her family the following day when they became concerned that she didn’t pick up her children the night before and they couldn’t reach her. Papa noted that it was Tyler who drove Wofford’s mother back to the apartment, never revealing to her that he knew her daughter was dead.
The gun used in the shooting has never been found and Tyler did not call for help or tell anyone about the shooting.
Video surveillance cameras recorded Tyler arriving at the home that night and leaving just after the shooting, where a holstered gun could be seen on Tyler’s hip.
Grace had cast Wofford as a jealous woman who grew increasingly unstable in the days leading up to the shooting, and acknowledged that the attempted coverup was indefensible— but was not covering up a murder, only an act of self-defense.
“What he did afterwards is awful. He was scared, he was afraid. Sometimes in life we make bad mistakes,” Grace said. “What did he do? He defended himself. He pushed that gun away from him. It’s justified.”
Tyler is listed as “inactive” in the department while “on a leave of absence,” a spokesperson said.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which investigates accusations of police misconduct, sent its final report on its investigation to the police superintendent in April 2023, but those records remain sealed while Tyler’s criminal case was pending.
