A quiet Saturday night in Chicago.
Via Chicago Tribune
Five people were shot, one of them fatally, in an attack in the Austin neighborhood during a block party Saturday evening.
This shooting and a handful of others left a total of two people dead and 14 others wounded between about 6 p.m. and 3:30 a.m., police said.
A 21-year-old man was pronounced dead at West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park after he was shot in the head in the 900 block of North Massasoit Avenue about 6 p.m., said Ana Pacheco.
Three other men and a woman were injured in what may have been a drive-by shooting, Pacheco said. The attack also included victims were shot a block away, in the 900 block of North Mayfield Avenue, police said.
Also injured were a woman, 43, a man, 26, who was shot in the foot and thigh, a man, 53, shot in the abdomen and thigh, and a man, 33, shot in the right foot. Police had no precise information on their conditions, but said their conditions had stabilized at West Suburban.
Neighborhood children were preparing to play musical chairs when the gunmen opened fire, block president Duane Holman said.
Holman, 53, said the shooting occurred at the corner of the block. At first, residents thought the bullets might be firecrackers, Holman said. But everyone ran into their home once they realized what was occurring.
“It was over with as fast as it happened,” Holman said.
The crowd disappeared but returned about 45 minutes later to play and celebrate on the block. About two hours after the shooting, there was little evidence that there had been a shooting.
Youth played basketball at the end of the block while two teams of 24 children competed in a tug of war contest at the center. A boombox played soothing music as kids rode their bikes around the neighborhood.
The 800 block of Massasoit had a block party going on, too, with a DJ blasting loud music as residents danced on the street.
Holman said it was important not to let kids be influenced by the violence by trying to provide them a “normal atmosphere.”
“You don’t want them to adopt that attitude and think it’s normal because it’s not” Holman said.
Shootings across the city later on in the evening and into the night left one man dead and a number of others wounded.
A man walked into Swedish Covenant Hospital on the North Side after someone shot him near North and Kedzie avenues about 10:15 p.m. The 26-year-old had been shot in the shoulder.
A woman, 50, suffered a graze wound about 1:30 a.m. in the 4400 block of South Prairie Avenue in the Bronzeville neighborhood, police said. She was treated for the wound at the scene.
About 1:30 a.m., a 20-year-old man was shot in the 3600 block of South California Avenue. He walked into Holy Cross Hospital with a wound to his shoulder and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in stable condition, police said.
The man killed was shot in a bar at the corner of 45th Street and Kedzie Avenue in the Brighton Park neighborhood. The 24-year-old died at the scene, authorities said. Another man in his 30s was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital. The shooting happened about 2:35 a.m.