Boy, 11, shot during possible road rage incident in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood
CHICAGO (CBS) — An 11-year-old boy was shot during a road rage incident Friday morning in the Wicker Park neighborhood.
The incident happened just before 8:30 a.m. in the 1400 block of North Western Avenue.
A grandfather was dropping off his grandson for school when he said he was merging lanes when he accidentally hit another car. Before he was able to get out to give the other driver his insurance information, they started shooting—hitting the 11-year-old backseat passenger in his left hand. Stray bullets also hit a black SUV nearby.
The grandfather was able to flag down a nearby ambulance. The boy was then taken to Stroger Hospital in good condition.
Rachel Gurneau, a mom who lives steps away from the scene, said her husband and son had just left to go to school when she heard the gunshots.
"I heard like maybe five really fast shots like pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, and then tires screeching," she said.
Gurneau mentioned that it's a high-traffic area and is thankful that her family wasn't caught in the crossfire.
"It's traumatizing. You send your kids to school not to get shot," she said. "There's a lot of kids that walk past here in the morning, on this side, that side, we got three, four different schools in the area."
"Right now, we're in contact with the social clinical worker at Stroger to try and reach out to the family to try and offer our services that we can," Adrian Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez is part of the Violence Prevention and Intervention Program at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center.
"It's unfortunate this happened, especially in this area. There's so many schools around here, right? So, we want to make sure we're protecting the kids in this neighborhood," he said.
The driver in the offending vehicle fled in an unknown direction. Police were not able to provide a description of the vehicle.
Investigation into the incident remains ongoing by Area 5 detectives.
