Three people, including a 3-year-old boy, are in critical condition Friday after an apparent gang-related shooting at a neighborhood basketball court in Chicago that left up to 13 people injured. As bullets began to fly at Cornell Square Park, near 51st and Wood streets on Chicago's South Side, people scattered, taking cover wherever they could, police and witnesses told CBS Chicago station WBBM-TV. The victims were taken to six different hospitals after they were shot around 10:15 p.m. Dozens of police officers swarmed the park after the shooting.
The child's uncle, Julian Harris, told the Chicago Sun-Times that a dreadlocked men in a gray sedan shot at him Thursday night before turning toward nearby Cornell Square Park and opening fire. He said his nephew was shot in the cheek. "They hit the light pole next to me, but I ducked down and ran into the house," Harris said. "They've been coming round here looking for people to shoot every night, just gang-banging stuff. It's what they do."
The shooting is the latest outburst of violence in the city, which had more than 500 homicides in 2012 — more than any other city in the nation, and about 80 more than New York, which has twice as many people. The victims ranged in age from 3 to 41, according to the Fire Department. Two of the wounded were teenagers, and the 3-year-old, who was later identified by family members as Deonta Howard Jr.
“He’s doing fine. He’s healthy, he’s breathing on his own. It’s nothing wrong with him. The bullet didn’t hit his brain. It just hit his cheek,” his aunt Kailynn Jordan said. Deonta’s grandmother, Tracy Gautreaux, asked others to pray for an end to the violence, because “it’s too many kids getting hurt out here.” “A 3-year-old getting hurt out there, you know, it’s serious. People need to pay attention to what’s going on in their community, and make sure that the kids’ safe,” she said.
Ron Gaines, a police spokesman, confirmed the shooting appeared to be gang related. The city has sought to combat such violence in recent months by deploying hundreds of officers on overtime to 20 neighborhoods plagued by shootings and by focusing on reducing the city’s endemic gang warfare, particularly retaliatory shootings. Chicago police say the murder rate is about 20 percent lower this year when compared to 2012.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel was in Washington, D.C., on Friday, but cancelled his schedule there and flew back to Chicago. His office issued a written statement from the mayor: “Senseless and brazen acts of violence have no place in Chicago and betray all that we stand for. The perpetrators of this crime will be brought to justice and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I encourage everyone in the community to step forward with any information and everyone in Chicago to continue their individual efforts to build stronger communities where violence has no place.”
As of Friday morning, no arrests have been reported.
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