Early Sunday morning, a shooting incident near Loyola University's Chicago campus resulted in two men being wounded and at least one vehicle damaged by stray bullets. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the event took place around 2 a.m. on West Devon Avenue, between Magnolia and North Lakewood avenues.
A 29-year-old and a 31-year-old man sustained injuries in the shooting, with the former being shot in the hip and torso and the latter in the abdomen, as per the Chicago Police Department. Both men were hospitalized in fair condition. Witnesses reported to WGN-TV that there appeared to have been a fight before the gunfire. Moreover, multiple people were seen fleeing the scene in surveillance footage following the altercation.
The area where the shooting occurred is a part of the Rogers Park neighborhood, which is densely populated by college students. An employee from a local pizza restaurant, while finishing his shift, discovered his car had been hit by multiple bullets. "It just makes you feel – I don’t even know how to describe it – it just feels awful inside," the car owner Andrew Johnston told WGN-TV.
Loyola University students have also voiced their concern over this violent outbreak that, in the words of sophomore Evelyn Hart, "is so scary, because we're always walking up and down this street." The students were particularly troubled due to the lack of immediate notification or crime alerts from their university, despite the proximity to their campus. "We do have a lot of blue lights, like safety precautions on campus, but it is so hard with an open fire shooting like this; it’s difficult to see what you would do and how you would react. Most people would freeze in those types of situations," Hart explained to WGN-TV. As of now, no arrests have been made. Area Three Detectives continued their investigation at the scene on Sunday.
