Four teenagers were shot, one critically, in an attack on the South Side this evening, officials said.
Two boys, both age 17, and two girls, both age 15, were shot near 100th Street and Michigan Avenue about 5:25 p.m., said Chicago Police News Affairs Officer Veejay Zala, citing preliminary information.
Chicago police officers remove crime scene tape from near where four teenagers were shot this evening. (Tribune / Nuccio DiNuzzo)
One boy was shot in the head; the other was shot in the left thigh, according to police. One girl received a gunshot wound to the right knee and the other suffered a graze wound to his back, according to a police media notification.
The victims were involved in an altercation with three teenage boys ages 15 to 16, who left after the fight and returned with a handgun, firing at the victims and wounding them, according to police.
Friends and family of victims said that the shooting took place after a boy and girl were arguing. Two of the victims were brother and sister.
Police and fire department officials had conflicting information about which hospitals the teens were taken to following the shooting.
One of the two boys drove himself to near 111th Street and Wentworth Avenue following the shooting, Fire Department spokesman Quention Curtis said.
The boy shot in the head was in critical condition at Stroger Hospital, Zala said. The two girls and the boy shot in the legs were stabilized after being taken to Stroger, he said.
However, Curtis said two patients were taken to Stroger in critical condition and a third to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in critical condition and the fourth victim was taken to Roseland Hospital in fair-to-good condition.
Roger Nelson said his niece was one of the gunshot victims. He arrived at his sister's home on 100th Street just east of State Street after hearing about the shooting.
Most of the girl's family member were at Stroger Hospital, where she's being treated.
A man, who would not give his name, said the teen who was shot in the head is one of his best friends. He and another friend came to the block to find out how their friend was doing.
"He had nothing to do with it," the man said, though he was not at the scene when the shooting happened.
The two men were told that a boy and a girl were arguing when the boy started to walk away. As he walked away, he began to shoot at the crowd.
"An argument in the street turned into gunfire," said the man.
A 14-year-old girl who lives in the same apartment building as the brother and sister who were shot was at home with her 12-year-old brother when gunfire began, she said. She was in the kitchen and her brother was watching television.
"I didn't hear the gunshots, but my brother did," she said. "He fell to the floor. I asked him why he was on the floor and he told me he heard gunshots."
"I saw one boy limping, a girl holding her knee crying and another girl shot in the back," the 14-year-old said.
The brother and sister who were shot attend Harlan Community Academy High School, 9652 S. Michigan Ave., the 14-year-old said.
Agnes Bell, 60, who lives across the street from the shooting scene, was in the basement doing laundry when she heard gunfire.
"I heard pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, then I heard someone screaming... It's so sad," Bell said.
Bell has lived on the block for 36 years. She said she hasn't heard about shootings on the block in a long time, though she would hear youth fighting on occasion.
-- Serena Maria Daniels, Liam Ford
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