A 30-year-old man is dead and a 32-year-old man is fighting for his life after someone inside a light-colored car opened fire on both of them as they stood outside on the 1400 block of West 65th Street. No one has been arrested, and police are still trying to determine who pulled the trigger and why.
The shooting happened in Chicago's West Englewood neighborhood, according to CBS Chicago. Police say the car approached the two men before someone inside fired, striking both of them with gunshot wounds throughout their bodies. The vehicle then fled north on Laflin Street, and investigators have not said whether nearby surveillance cameras caught it leaving the scene.
The 30-year-old victim was rushed to the University of Chicago Medical Center in Hyde Park, where he was pronounced dead. The hospital operates the South Side's only Level 1 Adult Trauma Center, a facility that opened in May 2018 to close a long-standing gap in emergency care for the area and has since treated more than 18,000 adult patients, according to UChicago Medicine.
Second Victim Critical at Suburban Trauma Center
The surviving victim, a 32-year-old man, was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in suburban Oak Lawn and was listed in serious condition. That hospital is designated a Level 1 Trauma Center by the Illinois Department of Public Health and regularly receives trauma transports from the South Side. The distance between the two hospitals reflects how heavily the region leans on a handful of trauma centers to handle serious gunshot injuries.
Wentworth Area detectives are investigating the shooting, the outlet's report notes. The 1400 block of West 65th Street sits within the Chicago Police Department's 7th District, headquartered just two blocks away at 1438 West 63rd Street, though homicide investigations are directed out of Area One headquarters on South Wentworth Avenue.
A Block With a Violent Past
This is not the first time gunfire has struck that stretch of West 65th Street. Back in November 2020, a gunman fired across the street there, wounding a 14-year-old girl and an adult man, and no arrests were made in that case at the time, per FOX 32 Chicago.
Vehicle-involved shootings have become a recurring feature of West Englewood violence in recent months. In June, a drive-by shooting in the 6500 block of South Hermitage Avenue killed two men and critically wounded a woman after an SUV pulled up and its occupants opened fire, a pattern investigators have seen play out repeatedly across the neighborhood.
Citywide Numbers Tell a Mixed Story
The West Englewood shooting lands amid a broader, complicated picture of violence in Chicago. The city recorded 210 homicides through the first six months of 2026, a roughly 6% increase over the same period in 2025, according to WTTW News. Shooting incidents also rose 4% to 686 through June.
That uptick follows a historic low. Chicago logged just 416 homicides in 2025, the city's lowest annual total since 1965, down sharply from the pandemic-era peak of 805 homicides in 2021. Even so, a July survey by NORC at the University of Chicago found 44% of city residents believed violent crime was rising, compared with just 18% who thought it had fallen, despite the statistics staying near six-decade lows.
Hoodline has covered a string of West Englewood shootings in recent months, including a shooting that left a teen critical on 66th Street in April and a fatal drive-by that killed a 47-year-old man on 71st Street in May. No arrests have been announced in Wednesday's shooting, and the identity of the shooter, the motive, and whether the two men were specifically targeted all remain open questions. Anyone with information is asked to contact Area One Detectives at (312) 747-8380 or submit an anonymous tip at CPDTIP.com.
