15-year-old charged with gunning down postal worker days after another mail carrier threatened with knife
The 15-year-old allegedly shot postal worker Octavia Redmond while in a stolen vehicle
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A 15-year-old was arrested and charged with murder on Tuesday for allegedly fatally shooting a Postal Service worker in Chicago in July. The arrest come just days after a Michigan man allegedly threatened a postal worker with a knife.
The teen, whose name was not released by police, allegedly shot letter carrier Octavia Redmond, 48, and fled in a stolen Dodge Durango, according to the Postal Inspection Service. Remond later died from her injuries.
“There is no place for this senseless violence,” Chicago division inspector in charge Ruth M. Mendonça said in a statement. “When members of our postal family are targeted, postal inspectors will not result until justice is delivered on behalf of the victims, their families, and our postal community.”
The statement added that Redmond was “a wife and mother and is remembered as a staple to the postal customers she served.”
A GoFundMe page set up by relatives describes Redmond as the “Queen of our family.”
The Chicago Police Department and the US Marshals Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force arrested the alleged shooter on Monday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the department said.
The teen appeared in juvenile court on Tuesday and was ordered to be held in custody, according to The New York Times. It’s unclear if the youth has a lawyer.
He’s set to appear in court on November 1.
The arrest comes after Michigan police on Friday charged a Detroit-area man, Russell Frank Valleu, 61, with allegedly lunging at a Black woman postal worker with a knife in anger over receiving political mail from Kamala Harris.
The mail carrier called for help at around 5pm, telling operators that the man was angry about receiving Harris campaign ads and seemed to be drunk, according to a police statement seen by Law & Crime.
Valleu has a decades-long history of criminal arrests and convictions, ranging from aggravated stalking through domestic violence to firearm possession by a felon, per public records accessed by The Independent.
"The defendant was allegedly upset that he had received mail regarding presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and allegedly said that he did not want that ‘black b**ch’ in his mailbox," Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald said in a statement.
The mail carrier then fought off the man with pepper spray, according to the prosecutor.
"Whatever our political beliefs, no one should be assaulted or threatened because of their race, or for doing their job,” McDonald added in her statement.