Lincoln Park Woman Says She Was Shot Near Shuttered Bar — Police Find No Evidence

A 33-year-old woman walked into John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County around 3:50 a.m. Saturday with a gunshot wound to her right foot, telling Chicago police she had been shot while riding in a vehicle in the 1100 block of West Wrightwood Avenue in Lincoln Park. But officers who checked the area found no shell casings or other evidence of a shooting, and no one had called 911 to report gunfire there.

According to a Chicago Police Department media statement reported by CWB Chicago, the woman said she heard gunshots and then realized she had been hit. The other occupants of the vehicle she was riding in did not call 911 to report that they had been shot at, and police received no calls reporting gunfire in the area at the time she described. She was listed in fair condition after walking into the hospital on her own.

The discrepancies have left investigators with open questions about exactly where — or whether — the shooting happened as described. The reported location on West Wrightwood sits roughly four blocks north of the 2200 block of North Lincoln Avenue, where a now-shuttered bar called The Dime once operated. If investigators confirm the woman's account, she would become the fourth person shot in Lincoln Park in 2026, per the same report.

A Bar Already Linked to Two Shootings This Summer

The Dime has been at the center of Lincoln Park's nightlife-violence debate since early summer. City officials connected two other shootings in the neighborhood to the bar this year, including a fatal shooting on July 19 in which 30-year-old Malik McCorkle was killed after a fight inside The Dime spilled onto North Lincoln Avenue, as Hoodline previously reported. The Cook County State's Attorney's Office later announced it would not file charges against a concealed-carry holder detained in that case, concluding after reviewing surveillance footage that the evidence was insufficient to disprove self-defense, according to FOX 32 Chicago.

The second incident dated back to June 7, when a shooting in the 600 block of West Belden Avenue critically injured a 39-year-old woman near the same nightlife strip, a case Hoodline also covered at the time. On July 30, 23-year-old Jaylin Jones was charged with felony attempted first-degree murder and aggravated battery in that shooting, according to CBS News.

City Shut Down the Bar, but Pressure to Ban It Continues

Chicago Police Interim Superintendent Fred Waller issued an emergency Summary Closure Order on July 21, immediately shutting down The Dime for up to six months after police formally tied the fatal July shooting to the establishment, according to CWB Chicago. It was not the city's first attempt to rein in the bar — an earlier public safety complaint had already forced The Dime into a city abatement plan requiring at least three security guards, surveillance cameras, and limits on outside event promoters, ABC7 Chicago reported.

That earlier intervention apparently wasn't enough for neighbors. In August, 43rd Ward Alderman Timmy Knudsen submitted a formal complaint backed by more than 800 community signatures asking the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection and the Local Liquor Control Commissioner to permanently revoke The Dime's liquor and Public Place of Amusement licenses, according to the alderman's office.

Staffing Gaps Shadow the Nightlife Corridor

The debate over the bar itself sits alongside a separate, harder problem: police staffing along the Lincoln Avenue corridor. CPD radio transmissions showed that the Near North (18th) District was operating under Radio Assignment Pending backlog status for nearly two hours before the July 19 fatal shooting, leaving 911 calls about a 40-to-50-person fight and an armed man unassigned for lack of available patrol units, per CWB Chicago's reporting. Chicago Office of Inspector General records cited in that same reporting showed 18th District staffing fell 16% between early 2026 and June 2026, from 387 officers down to 324.

That staffing context does not directly explain the Wrightwood Avenue case, since police found no evidence a shooting occurred there at all. But it underscores the same tension that has defined the corridor for months: community frustration aimed squarely at bar-related violence, even as officials wrestle with the department's own capacity to verify and respond to reports of gunfire in the area.

Stroger Hospital, where the woman was treated, is a Level 1 trauma center in the Illinois Medical District that handles roughly 120,000 emergency cases a year, according to CBS News Chicago. Police have not said whether the investigation into her claim remains open or whether the reported shooting location will be reexamined.