The death
of Gerald Mason, an Illinois State Police trooper who died on a Chicago
expressway on Friday, has been ruled a suicide, according to a report by the
Cook County Medical Examiner’s office that came out on Saturday.

The autopsy
report has found that District Chicago Trooper Mason, 35, died of a gunshot
wound to the head, the medical examiner’s office said, the Associated Press
reported. His age was initially reported as 36 on Friday by state police.

The 11-year
state police veteran died on Friday shortly after the shooting around 2 p.m. on
the inbound lanes of the Dan Ryan Expressway on the city’s South Side,
authorities said.

“He
was an amazing District Chicago trooper,” Illinois State Police Director Brendan
Kelly had said during a news conference on Friday.

The
trooper’s mother, Linda Mason, told the Chicago Sun-Times  that her son had wanted to be an officer
since he was a toddler. He was a Chicago native who dedicated his life to
policing, she said.

“He
was a sweetheart, and he loved everybody. He just wanted to protect people and make
this city and state better,” she said.

The state
police had released a statement about gun violence on Thursday and had said on
Friday that the department was going to beef up patrols “during peak criminal
activity times,” in the evening and overnight hours.

According
to police data, district Chicago has reported a total of 185 expressway
shootings in the year 2021. This number stood at 83 at the same time last year.
The yearly total of the shootings stood at 128 in 2020.

And if 2021
has been worse than 2020, it was itself worse than the previous year of 2019.
There had been more than twice the number of shootings in 2020 than the 52
expressway shootings in 2019. There were 43 in 2018, according to the state
police data.

(With AP inputs)