City officials moved to crack down on street racing and drifting during the summer. But an alderman says those activities are now merging with gang life and street violence after three people were fatally shot during a large car caravan in the Brighton Park neighborhood early Sunday.
At a news conference Sunday morning, Don Jerome, 9th District commander for the Chicago Police Department, said in addition to the three killed, two others were wounded while participating in a car caravan at the intersection of South Archer Avenue and South Kedzie Avenue. The caravan included about 100 vehicles.
About 4 a.m., officers responded to the 4300 block of South Kedzie Avenue, where vehicles were drifting in the middle of the street. According to the city code, drifting refers to when a driver purposely makes a vehicle “spin, skid, slide, turn abruptly or sway” upon acceleration or braking, often to make circles or figure eights.
A shot spotter alerted at least 13 rounds had been fired. As initial police units arrived, officers discovered five people shot. Three succumbed to their injuries.
All the people shot at the caravan were males, Jerome said, and those who died were between 15 to 20 years old and were gang-affiliated. The two people injured were in serious condition at Mount Sinai Hospital, he added, “but they are expected to recover.”
Detectives recovered casings but no guns on scene. There were no immediate arrests.
“There were several calls of car caravans citywide, all over, this was the first we responded to in the 9th District … I don’t know the specifics of the other car caravans,” Jerome said. “Caravans (are) a semi-recent phenomenon where they gather throughout different points of the city, and there were several others last night of no consequence … until this one.”
According to a police report, video footage shows five people, who were engaged in a verbal altercation, pull out handguns and shoot each other. One of the shooters fled the scene, the report says. One of the injured males told police he was watching drag racing when he was shot.
Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th, who represents the Brighton Park area and is running for mayor, said drag racing and drifting have been a problem not only in his ward but in the city of Chicago. He told reporters at the scene that he has been trapped by one such large caravan and described it as being held “hostage on the public way.”
“I think what we’re seeing is the merging of this drag racing circuit with gang life. And now, those ramifications are unfolding on our streets,” he told the Tribune. “But this emergence of people coming armed to these events and shooting at each other — that is a relatively new but growing trend, from what I’m told.”
He added that vehicles need to be boxed in and impounded where they are drag racing and drifting, in order to “get these cars off the streets, show that we’re serious about this.”
“Because right now, they know that we are doing everything as passively and as weakly as possible,” the alderman said. “We have to do better, because I’m not going to be a leader who’s quietly watching the bodies pile up because we’re too timid to act.”
The three people killed in the car caravan were among nine people fatally shot in Chicago between Saturday night and Sunday morning. A 16-year-old boy shot in North Lawndale was one of the victims, according to police.
The 16-year-old was standing outside in the 1200 block of South Fairfield Avenue at approximately 8:20 p.m. Saturday when two men climbed out of a dark-colored sedan and shot at him, police said. The men then returned to the car and fled the scene. The teen was struck once on his back and paramedics transported him to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 9:03 p.m. The Cook County medical examiner’s office identified the boy Sunday morning as Rishiwn Hendricks of the 1200 block of South Washtenaw Avenue.
A 13-year-old girl was also in the area when the shooting of the 16-year-old occurred, and she was shot twice in the neck. She was transported to Stroger Hospital in good condition. No arrests had been made as of Sunday morning in the shooting, and detectives are investigating.
Other fatal weekend shootings included one that killed 18-year-old Joshua Stokes in Austin; a 63-year-old in an apartment complex parking lot in the South Shore; a 31-year-old who was shot in the head and back during an altercation in Auburn Gresham; a 37-year-old shot inside a residence in Scottsdale; and a 29-year-old found unresponsive with a gunshot wound to the chest in Bronzeville, according to information by police and the medical examiner’s office.
There was an immediate arrest only in the shooting of the 31-year-old, police said. Detectives are investigating all incidents.
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The AP contributed.
