Awaaz Punjab first reported this shooting on October 26, when officials had confirmed only that one person was shot during an incident involving federal agents in Pilsen and had not released a name or an account of what happened. On Tuesday, October 27, the FBI identified the man who died and gave its first official account of the encounter. Read the first report
The man shot and killed by an off-duty FBI agent in Chicago's Pilsen neighbourhood on Monday evening was Oscar D. Corrales, 27, the FBI said in a statement on Tuesday, October 27, reported by Fox News and confirmed in outline by Chicago outlets. The bureau said its agent, who was driving home alone in a Bureau-issued vehicle, saw Corrales fire at least two shots toward a group of people near West 18th Street and South Union Avenue at about 5:30 p.m. on Monday, October 26, and intervened to stop the threat. No FBI agents were injured, and the bureau reported no other injuries.
Federal law-enforcement sources told Fox News that Corrales was firing a gun toward people in a homeless encampment beneath the expressway when the off-duty agent encountered him. The agent stopped, got out of his vehicle and shot Corrales, the sources said. Video obtained by CBS News Chicago showed the agent with his gun drawn over the man on the ground near an e-bike in the moments afterwards. The sources stressed to Fox News that the encounter was not part of an immigration enforcement operation: the agent was off duty and happened upon the shooting while driving.
Chicago police confirmed that officers responded to a shooting involving federal agents in the 1700 block of South Union Avenue, and that the department's Investigative Response Team was sent to document the scene, referring further questions to the FBI's Chicago field office. Around 6 p.m. on Monday, multiple Chicago police and other law-enforcement vehicles were at the scene, a black sedan was visible inside an area secured with crime-scene tape, and the outbound Dan Ryan Expressway exit to 18th Street was closed during the police response, Focal News reported.
Identity and immigration history — what officials say
The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office provided a record identifying Corrales as a 27-year-old man under case number 5735. The FBI said it learned after the shooting that Corrales was a Venezuelan national who had been taken into custody at the southern border in 2023 and released during the previous administration. Federal sources told Fox News he was apprehended at the border in October 2023. The same sources said Corrales had previously been arrested in California, where he was released from custody despite an ICE detainer; the circumstances of that arrest — the charges and the California jurisdiction involved — were not immediately available, and Awaaz Punjab reports that detail as a claim attributed to those sources, not as a confirmed fact.
Federal sources stressed that the Chicago shooting was not connected to any immigration enforcement operation. The FBI agent was off duty, driving home alone, when he encountered the gunfire — a distinction the bureau's account and the sources both underline, even as Corrales's immigration history became part of the reporting afterwards.
The review now under way
The FBI said the shooting is being reviewed by its Inspection Division, in accordance with the bureau's policy governing agent-involved shootings, and that it does not anticipate releasing additional information while the investigation remains ongoing. Agent-involved shootings are routinely reviewed internally, and the bureau has not released the agent's name. Chicago police documented the scene but are not the investigating agency for the federal shooting itself.
Pilsen, on Chicago's Lower West Side, sits beside the Dan Ryan Expressway corridor, and the shooting closed the 18th Street exit during the Monday evening rush — the most visible local impact of an encounter that lasted moments. What happens next rests with the FBI's Inspection Division review: no timeline for its findings has been announced, and until it reports, the official record consists of the bureau's Tuesday statement, the medical examiner's identification, and the scene documentation by Chicago police. Awaaz Punjab will update this story if the review produces new verified findings.