Gunfire erupted just after midnight as a crowd of as many as 100 people scattered from a Northwest Side street, leaving behind eight spent shell casings and a parked car struck twice by bullets. Police say the shots were fired and a vehicle was damaged at about 1 a.m. on Oct. 31 in the 4400 block of North Merrimac Avenue, though no injuries were reported.
Officers were responding to a disturbance when they found the large gathering already breaking up, with people walking through the street and the nearby alley, according to Nadig Newspapers. Police counted roughly 60 to 100 people in the crowd. When officers asked bystanders about the loud noises, those questioned said they thought the bangs were fireworks rather than gunshots.
A Resident's Account of the Gunfire
One resident told police a different story. The resident said they heard approximately eight to ten loud bangs and spotted someone in a white hooded sweatshirt standing near a car parked on the street, though they did not see a firearm, per the same account relayed to officers.
That person, according to police, then got into a silver sedan and fled west on Sunnyside. Officers searching the area afterward recovered eight spent .223 shell casings from the west side of the 4400 block of Merrimac, pointing to a rifle-caliber weapon having been fired nearby.
Bullet Holes Discovered Hours Later
The damage wasn't fully apparent until later that morning. At about 10:30 a.m. on Oct. 31, a woman reported discovering two bullet holes in the front windshield of her vehicle, which had been parked in the 4400 block of Merrimac. Police have said no injuries resulted from the incident despite the gunfire and the damaged windshield.
The shooting unfolded during a particularly violent stretch for the city. ABC7 Chicago reported that at least 15 people were shot, three of them fatally, in violence across the city over Halloween weekend. That tally included three people shot, one fatally, on West Ogden Avenue in North Lawndale, and a 35-year-old man killed in an argument-turned-shooting in the Mayfair neighborhood just before 11:30 p.m. the night before. Those incidents happened elsewhere in the city and are not connected to the Merrimac Avenue gunfire.
A separate shooting report also surfaced in the same general period. A Citizen post described a suspect firing multiple shots at a white SUV, with the shooter last seen heading south on Kenneth Avenue and then east on Thorndale. Police recovered two shell casings in that incident, and no shooting victims were reported at local hospitals in connection with it.
No arrests or identification of the person in the white hooded sweatshirt have been reported in connection with the Merrimac Avenue shooting. Police have not said what prompted the gathering of up to 100 people or what sparked the gunfire that sent the crowd scattering into the street and alley.
