CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- A 14-year-old girl is still fighting for her life Thursday morning, after she was shot in the head Wednesday night near a convenience store in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the Southwest Side.
According to surveillance video obtained by WGN-TV, the 14-year-old girl and a friend were walking a dog moments after leaving a corner store at 48th and Wood streets just after 6 p.m., when three people approached her.
They asked if she was in a gang and she said she wasn’t, at which point the three chased her half-way down the block and opened fire, according to Ald. Ray Lopez (15th), who said he got the details from police.
The 14-year-old girl was shot in the head.
Family friend Jorge Medina told CBS 2, “They shot her twice, out of nowhere. One in the head or both of the shots in the head, but they shot her twice.”
After the shooting, surveillance cameras caught three men running down 48th Street and jumping into an SUV.
Police said they are looking for three people in connection to the shooting, although only one showed a gun and fired. No one is in custody.
The girl is in critical condition at Comer Children’s Hospital. Her friend was not injured.
Lopez said the shooters, who were believed to be 15 and younger, are part of a new gang in the area that has been recruiting from a neighborhood school. The alderman blamed the glorification of gang culture for violence in his ward.
“This elevation of gang life has to come to an end. It’s not cute. It only comes to one outcome, what we saw last night,” Lopez said.
Community activist Andrew Holmes said the girl was in surgery around 8 p.m. Wednesday. Her family was at the hospital.
Holmes urged neighbors who may have cameras on their homes to give footage to the Chicago Police Department.
With shootings up 36 percent this year compared to 2020, Holmes put partial blame on pretrial judges who set bonds, saying the lack of consequences for gun offenders is resulting in more violence — a belief repeatedly expressed by Chicago Police Supt. David Brown.
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“These streets belongs to the children, the parks belong to the children,” Holmes said Wednesday outside Comer Hospital. “Give our city back to our youth.”
According to CBS 2, more than 120 kids and teens under 20 have been shot so far this year across Chicago.
Between 5 and 8 p.m. Wednesday, at least four other people were shot in Chicago, two of them fatally. Since last week Thursday, at least 10 people 18 or younger have been shot in the city.
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Through the end of May, 1,386 people were shot in Chicago, a jump from 1,116 during the same time in 2020. Murders have risen 5 percent compared to 2020, with the department reporting 252 murders so far this year.
(The Sun-Times Media Wire contributed to this copy.)
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