At least 15 people were shot overnight in Chicago from around 9:30 p.m. Saturday to just after 5 a.m. Sunday, and an 18-year-old man was killed in Grand Crossing. Seven of the victims were between 12 and 19 years old, turning a violent night into one that spread from children to young adults across the city.
The fatal shooting came around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, when officers found the 18-year-old in the 7700 block of South Rhodes Avenue with a gunshot wound to the head. He was pronounced dead at the scene. No one has been arrested in that killing, and police have not said what led to the shooting.
Earlier Saturday night, four boys were shot in the Grand Boulevard neighborhood after someone opened fire on them in the 4500 block of South Prairie Avenue at about 9:30 p.m. A 12-year-old boy was shot in the leg, a 13-year-old boy was shot in the leg, another 13-year-old boy was shot in the foot and a 14-year-old boy was grazed in the back. All four were in stable condition, with three taken to Comer Children’s Hospital and the 13-year-old shot in the leg taken to Stroger Hospital.
The overnight violence hit nearly every side of the city, and that breadth is part of what makes this stretch stand out. A woman was critically wounded in a separate shooting in Lincoln Park, adding to a night that moved from neighborhood to neighborhood without any sign of being confined to one block, one dispute or one age group.
What links the shootings is also what has not been answered. No one has been arrested in the Grand Boulevard shooting, and no arrest has been reported in the fatal shooting in Grand Crossing. For Chicago, the unanswered question is not whether the city had a violent night. It is whether these attacks were connected at all, or whether they were separate bursts of gunfire that happened to land in the same hours.
