7 wounded, 2 critical in Back of the Yards shooting: Police

Yahoo

5 days ago

A paramedic with the Chicago Fire Department emerged from a pale clapboard house in Chicago's Back of the Yards neighborhood around 11:15 p.m. Friday and yelled to the other emergency workers pouring onto the block.
'There's three in here,' he said.
A few minutes before, according to Chicago police, two men had run down the 4800 block of South Justine Street, firing, as people stood outside. They wounded four women and three men, police said.
Both Deering District (9th) Commander Joseph Mark and Area 1 Deputy Chief Don Jerome were present at the crime scene, which extended the entire block of South Justine Street between West 48th and West 49th Streets.
Some of the victims appeared to have run inside some of the houses on the block in the wake of the shooting. Stretchers and wheelchairs were lined up outside the home where the paramedic had found three people wounded, and neighbors held the door as they brought them out one at a time.
Up the street, medics wrapped a towel around the leg of another, shirtless man who they had found outside and lifted him into an ambulance. A few more houses north, they helped a woman down the stairs of a cottage and settled her onto a stretcher.
A 25-year-old woman shot in the rear and a 42-year-old man shot in the calf were taken in critical condition at the University of Chicago Hospital, police said. The other victims, who ranged in age from 21 to 29, were listed in serious condition at University of Chicago Hospital or Mt. Sinai Hospital, police said.
Officers began to drop makeshift evidence markers at the intersection where at dozens of rifle and handgun shell casings lay along with a puddle of blood. A beat cop walked up to a man in a striped shirt who stood quietly at the edge of the crime scene and asked if everyone was okay in his building.
Someone had opened a fire hydrant, which sprayed the street continuously as medics and police worked. Piles of discarded boxes and spent fireworks sat piled at the corner. A woman on a large adult tricycle pedaled up and down the sidewalk across the street as upbeat music played from a nearby yard and fireworks sounded every few seconds from other blocks.
A group of people, some of whom had been holding doors for medics, stood apart from the scene and talked amongst themselves. Most of the other neighbors who had been standing in their yards or at the street corners had gone inside.
Behind the police tape, officials were beginning to take stock of the evidence, marked by blue and orange scraps of paper littering the street.
A few minutes after they'd started to count in earnest, one officer looked up, flashlight in hand. He had 53 total, he said.
A second officer pointed out a few that he'd missed. One had rolled outside the tape. Another was buried in some rotting leaves. The counting officer ran out of evidence markers. they started to use bits of trash and debris to mark the new finds — a crushed red cup, a piece of plastic — and the total climbed nearly to 60.
Police said no one was in custody for the shooting as of early Saturday morning. Area One detectives were investigating.