A 19-year-old woman was wounded in a shooting Saturday night outside the Macy's department store on State Street in Chicago's bustling Loop, as the area was thronged with crowds celebrating the holiday season, CBS News Chicago reported. The incident, which occurred shortly before 9 p.m. near State and Washington streets, added a shock of violence to a night filled with festive activities, drawing revelers for the Magnificent Mile Lights Festival and Parade as well as the Christkindlmarket.
The young woman, struck by gunfire while walking with a group, scrambled into Macy's following the attack, authorities said, her condition was later described as fair by hospital officials. Concurrently, a second woman present during the shooting suffered a medical emergency, rumored to be a panic attack, and was also transported to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, this information per unconfirmed police dispatch reports cited by NBC Chicago.
Shoppers and festival-goers alike were plunged into chaos, with some ducking behind concrete barricades at Daley Plaza and others seeking refuge in nearby restaurants and storefronts; the shooting's disruption rippled even as the Christkindlmarket was nearing its nighttime closure and visitors were thinning out. "My cousin, she's from Rio de Janeiro, and Rio de Janeiro is known to be a violent city, and she never went through that before, and she came to Chicago to experience that. So it's kind of sad. I've been living in U.S. for 17 years, and when I moved here, this was unthinkable," Francisco Malafaia recounted the experience to CBS News Chicago.
Witnesses described the gunfire as loud and rapid, shaking the windows of buildings nearby, including the CBS News Chicago office on Washington Street less than a block from the scene. While officers swiftly responded to the bustling area, at one point detaining an individual near the CBS News Chicago offices no one was ultimately taken into custody, leaving Area 3 detectives to continue their investigation into the incident, CBS News Chicago sports anchor Matt Zahn heard gunshots from the station's office not a block away, illustrating the proximity to which violence encroached upon the city's festive spirit.
