A 4-year-old boy was shot twice in his head and critically wounded Friday evening in Woodlawn on the South Side, police said.
The child was inside a home around 9 p.m. in the 6500 block of South Ellis Avenue when bullets came through the front window, Chicago police said.
Paramedics took the child to Comer Children’s Hospital, police said. A 34-year-old woman was also taken to a hospital for lacerations related to the shooting, according to the Chicago Fire Department.
At the scene of the shooting, shell casings littered the front yard of a three-story apartment building that had a shattered front window.
Police said no one was in custody.
Activist Andrew Holmes spent time with the father of the boy outside the hospital.
“He’s in total shock and he just wants his child to survive,” Holmes said.
Holmes said the father’s shirt was drenched in blood.”
Outside Comer Children’s Hospital Friday night, advocates try to console the father of a child who was shot in Woodlawn.Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
He held his son until the paramedics arrived,” Holmes said. “Nobody wants to lose a loved one, especially his little guy,” he added. “We just need to pray the boy makes it.”
The child was the second 4-year-old to be wounded in gun violence in Chicago this week.
On Tuesday, a 4-year-old girl was shot and wounded while she combed a doll’s hair on the stoop of her home in Englewood. Police said she was caught in the crossfire of gunmen in two cars.
Last month, a 4-year-old girl became the youngest person to die from gun violence in Chicago this year. Makalah McKay was accidentally shot by another child who found a gun Aug. 5 in the 6400 block of South Carpenter Street in Englewood.
In June, a 4-year-old boy was wounded in an accidental shooting on the same block where Friday’s shooting occurred. Police said the child was hit in the hand and a 17-year-old boy was shot in the foot June 21. A 15-year-old boy seen leaving the home was arrested and charged with unauthorized use of a weapon.
Read more on crime, and track the city’s homicides.
Chicago police outside Comer Children’s Hospital, where a 4-year-old boy was taken in critical condition Friday night after being shot in Woodlawn.Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
