A devastating ordeal unfolded on the Near West Side when a 3-year-old boy was tragically struck by a stray bullet inside his apartment during an attempted robbery nearby, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The incident occurred Saturday at about 4:50 p.m. at the 1000 block of West 14th Street, police reports indicated that six gunmen demanded property from a 20-year-old man and fired shots into the air, one of which hit the child as he lay in bed with his family.
The boy, upon being hit, conveyed the stark horror of the incident to his mother saying, "Mommy, I'm shot," as he pointed to the injury on his left ear, in a statement obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times. His mother, also injured from the shattered glass, joined her children in the dreadful aftermath as many as forty shots echoed through their home causing someone to scream for help, and the boy was later taken to Stroger Hospital in what was considered fair condition.
Further details from ABC7 Chicago revealed that the robbery victim, while confronted by an armed offender, was fortunately not harmed despite the ensuing violence that permeated the calm of the residential space and left an innocent child wounded.
Chicago police's ongoing investigation into the shooting has yet to result in any arrests, the mother of the injured child, Andrea Boyd, communicated her deep-seated fear and frustration, sharing that her family has been enduring the constant threat of violence ever since they moved into the complex only a few months before the incident, "You can't go to work, you can't let your kids go to school by themselves," she told the Chicago Sun-Times, "everyone has to drop [everything] just to make your kids get back and forth."
