A burst of gun violence rattled Chicago's South Side on Thursday afternoon, tragically cutting short the life of a 15-year-old boy and critically injuring a 12-year-old. According to WGN-TV, the incident took place just before 4 p.m. in a vacant lot located at the 600 block of West 47th Street in the New City neighborhood, where the boys became embroiled in an altercation with an unspecified number of individuals. Amid the chaos, gunshots pierced the air, leaving one teenager fatally wounded and another fighting for his life.
Witnesses described at least one gunman amongst the crowd who opened fire, striking the two young victims. After escaping to the rear of Style Headquarters barbershop, the shop's owner found the older boy collapsed and struggling, appearing to have run from the scene, despite the proximity to Tilden High School. "Went back there to take my break, and he was laid out on the gate. I thought he fell from the roof... but whole time he got shot on the other end of the alley, and ran all the way down here. They chased him down to the back of the house right there," the owner recounted in an interview obtained by ABC7 Chicago. Both boys were rushed to the University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital in a critical condition, with the older boy later declared deceased.
Despite the swift response by emergency services, the attackers remain at large, with no immediate information on the suspects provided by the Chicago Police Department. Moved by the day's events, Alderman Raymond Lopez took to social media to express his concerns, declaring the need for a more robust presence of uniformed guards. "If having national guardsmen on hand to increase uniform presence keeps our youth from getting shot, what's the problem?" Lopez ignited discourse around the lack of effective solutions from state and city leaders shared by the barbershop owner who has been part of the community for five years and was taken aback by the incident. "Our anniversary's coming up; so I really never seen nothing like that in this neighborhood," he told ABC7 Chicago.
