A 53-year-old man was shot in the chest inside a residence in the 6900 block of South Oakley Avenue in West Englewood Thursday night, October 29, 2026, Chicago police said. He was rushed to Christ Medical Center in critical condition, and as of the latest update, no one had been taken into custody.
Police said the shooting happened around 7:24 p.m., according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Officers said the 53-year-old had been inside a residence where he was not authorized to be when he was shot in the chest. Police have attributed the shooting to a 46-year-old man, though the circumstances remain under investigation and no arrest had been reported at last check.
A separate report from Citizen offered a different sequence of events, saying the initial call came in around 7:25 p.m. as a report of an armed person trespassing in a backyard at 6932 South Oakley Avenue, with officers then confirming a shooting at that same address. Citizen's update did not include the victim's condition or say whether anyone was in custody at the time it was published. The two accounts do not fully align on how the incident unfolded, and it has not been established whether they describe the exact same sequence beyond the shared address.
A Neighborhood That Has Seen Other Recent Violence
West Englewood has had other high-profile shootings this year. In May, a 54-year-old man was critically wounded in a drive-by shooting in the 7100 block of South Ashland Avenue, with someone firing from a dark-colored SUV toward a man inside a vehicle, according to ABC7 Chicago. That victim was shot several times and taken to Advocate Christ Hospital in critical condition.
The neighborhood also saw a fatal shooting in April 2019, when 19-year-old Jhanari Robinson was killed near the 6500 block of South Oakley. It is not known whether Thursday's shooting is connected to either of these earlier incidents.
Citywide Numbers Tell a Different Story
The shooting comes even as Chicago's overall violence numbers have been trending sharply downward. The city recorded 416 murders in 2025, its lowest annual total since 1965, according to preliminary police data cited by Block Club Chicago. Homicides fell 29 percent and shootings dropped roughly 35 percent compared with 2024, and nearly 60 percent compared with 2021, per that outlet's reporting.
Seven community areas, including West Englewood, accounted for 35 percent of that citywide decline in gun violence last year, the same report noted. Still, not every category of violence moved in the same direction: fatal domestic shootings rose by 50 percent in 2025, and overall domestic homicides increased by about 15 percent, according to the Block Club Chicago analysis. Those citywide figures do not speak to any specific cause behind Thursday's shooting, which Chicago police say remains an open investigation.
