Police cars are parked near West Grand Avenue and North State Street in the River North neighborhood after three people were shot Saturday in a parking garage in the first block of West Grand Avenue, according to Chicago police. | Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
The gunshots rang out from a parking garage connected to a luxury high-rise condominium in a bustling area of River North near Dearborn Street.
Three men were shot during a gunfight at a parking garage on a busy Near North Side block Saturday morning, authorities said.
The men were “all shooting at each other” about 9:50 a.m. inside a parking garage in the first block of West Grand Avenue, according to Chicago police.
Two men, 27 and 28 years old, were taken with gunshot wounds to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, police said. The younger man was struck multiple times and was in critical condition, while the older man was grazed in the eye and in fair condition.
A third man, 20, was taken to Stroger Hospital in good condition with two gunshot wounds to his knee, police said.
No one was in custody Saturday afternoon.
A trio of witnesses, who asked not to be named, described what they called a “weird” series of events in the garage connected to a luxury high-rise condominium in a bustling area of River North near Dearborn Street.
Pat Nabong/Sun-TimesPolice investigate after a shooting near Grand and Dearborn Saturday morning.
The group said they were on their way to their vehicle when they heard what sounded like a car crash.
“I said, ‘Oh no, somebody’s s— got smacked — something happened,’” one witness recalled.
The group also heard two “pops,” which turned out to be gunshots.
When the group drove their car to the third floor of the garage, they saw a vehicle crashed into a cement barrier with its airbags deployed. The witnesses said it was unclear what led up to the crash.
“It didn’t make any sense the way it was crashed,” said one person.
When the group heard another gunshot and someone yell, “Shots fired!” they reversed their car and drove away.
The witnesses told investigators what they saw. Officers told the witnesses that there were four suspects.
Police blocked traffic on Grand Avenue between Dearborn Street and Wabash Avenue for the investigation, and pedestrians were blocked from walking on the normally busy stretch of Grand between State Street and Dearborn.
Pat Nabong/Sun-TimesPolice investigate after a shooting near Grand and Dearborn Saturday.
CTA Red Line trains bypassed the Grand station, causing confusion for some tourists who were left to gawk at the rain-soaked crime scene.
Corey Kaplan, the owner of Corey’s NYC Bagel Deli in River North and Goose Island, said he had just gotten back from a delivery when he saw the first squad car pull up to the garage.
“It’s absolutely mind blowing… and the reason why I say that is because we really try to think that River North is safe, and especially on a Saturday morning at 10 a.m. There’s a lot of kids and families that are walking around, they’re coming out for their normal Saturday morning bagel,” he said.
Kaplan said he had never seen anything like Saturday’s incident in his 10 years in the neighborhood.
“It’s really bizarre and mind-blowing that this could happen,” he said. “But what I think what is safe to say is that no place is safe anymore. It’s really scary.”
The loss to the Nets was a reminder of the talent gap the Bulls have with some of the elite teams in the Eastern Conference, even with Zach LaVine sitting. Now it’s about finishing up against Milwaukee, and then many offseason questions to answer.
The season of “what ifs’’ ends on Sunday, when the Bulls host Milwaukee in the finale.
A reminder of “Not even close?’’
That was handed out on Saturday.
With Brooklyn’s “Big Three’’ of future Hall of Famers Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving reunited on the court for the first time in three months, even with huge amounts of rust build up, they beat the Bulls 105-91.
Not that the three looked lights out by any means, but with the Bulls coming off the disappointment of officially being eliminated from the play-in game on Friday thanks to a Washington win over the Cavs, as well as coach Billy Donovan sitting out Zach LaVine, Tomas Satoransky and Daniel Theis, Brooklyn didn’t need the trio to look great.
It was more about getting them reps with each other as they prepare for a postseason run.
That they did, as Durant had 12 points and nine rebounds in 30minutes of work, Irving led them with 22 points, and Harden had five points and seven assists in 25 minutes of work.
As for the Bulls (30-41), it was dealing with the sting of unfulfilled goals, and at the same time trying to reconcile with the idea that the best is still in front of them.
Not easy to do when the opposing bench has the fire power of the Nets, while the Bulls have an All-Star duo in Nikola Vucevic and LaVine that still needs time together, and then a whole bunch of question marks surrounding them.
“Definitely disappointing,’’ Vucevic said of falling short of their playoff goals. “We really felt like we had a chance to get there and to get in the play-in and play for something further. But there were a lot of things that happened along the way that didn’t help us, either. I mean it’s hard to judge it now. There were definitely things we could have done better.’’
There’s no doubting that.
Defense, physicality, lack of urgency, all of it was on display far too often this season. This roster has to wear that, and can’t necessarily blame a lack of cohesion on it.
Where they do get a small pass, however, is the fact that because of the condensed second-half schedule, practice time was almost impossible to pull off. No biggie for some teams. But for a Bulls front office that added five new players at the trade deadline, they definitely had too many moments where they looked like a pick-up team thrown together at the local YMCA.
“When you make a trade midseason, a lot of things change and sometimes it takes more time, and unfortunately we didn’t have that,’’ Vucevic said. “It is disappointing we didn’t achieve our goal, so we have to be realistic and say we failed at that. But the only thing we can do is move forward and hopefully use that as motivation going into next year.’’
With still one game left, the Bulls locker room remained somewhat careful not to skip steps and start jumping into offseason changes and what needed to be worked on. That will likely come the next few days.
One positive, however, was rookie Patrick Williams taking an over-due aggressive approach on the offensive end, scoring 24 points on 9-for-14 shooting.
Donovan had been talking to Williams about being too unselfish, and the latest film session between the two hopefully unlocked something.
“It definitely helps, just kind of see how it is from a film point of view, it kind of feels or looks different to me out there on the court than it does on film, but when you have a birds eye view it kind of makes it easier to read,’’ Williams said. “They obviously trust me and have confidence in me, so not letting them down and having confidence in myself.’’
White said he didn’t want to be judged on last year, and even the early part of this season. The way the second-year player sees it, he’s still learning and only getting better at the point guard position.
With postseason hopes now officially crushed on Friday night, the list of offseason decisions by this Bulls front office is plenty.
Second-year player Coby White has only been adding to that.
Entering the Saturday afternoon game in Brooklyn, White averaged 18.3 points and 5.1 assists per game in the first seven games in March, while also shooting 43% from three-point range.
Numbers that would seem to indicate that the point guard problems plaguing the team most of the season have been solved in-house. At the same time, a small enough of a sample size where it could simply be a mirage, especially when he went 1-for-10 in the loss to the Nets.
White didn’t agree with the mirage part.
“Disregard everything that happened last year, well, this [earlier] year, I just feel like I’m continuing to grow,’’ White said of his progression as a starting point guard. “I don’t really feel like it’s a thing where, ‘At the end of the season, he gets hot.’ Nah, because I feel like this year I’ve been growing and learning and everything is starting to come together at the right time.
“I feel like if you live right, you do the right things, everything will come together for you. So that’s how I see it.’’
Is that how executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas will see it, however?
White was handed the starting job out of camp, and struggled with consistency on both ends until he was benched for Tomas Satoransky in mid-March. White earned that starting spot back a month later, and has played at a much higher level all around since.
What the front office has to decide is has White shown enough that they can address other positions this summer or is White simply a combo guard who still needs a veteran mentor?
Dennis Schroder, Lonzo Ball (restricted), Mike Conley, Kyle Lowry and Chris Paul (player option), can each be on the market, but also come with big receipts.
White’s stance is the team’s already invested in him, and he’s only getting better.
“A lot of guys my age, especially getting taken out the starting lineup, you could’ve handled that two different ways,’’ White said. “You could’ve pouted and just said forget it, F it, or you could’ve just kept playing and continue to get better and continue to stay on the grind. And I chose to continue to stay on the grind and continue to keep playing. And then my number got called and I took advantage of it.
“I feel like I have the best job in the world. I don’t even look at it as a job really, I look at it as a dream come true. I’m going to continue to get better and continue to grind. I still have a long way to go.’’
Bull market
The Bulls only have seven players under contract for next season, and that included Thad Young and Tomas Satoransky, who each have partial guarantees in the final year of their deals.
Nikola Vucevic will currently be the highest-paid Bull at $24 million for the 2021-22 campaign, followed by Zach LaVine ($19.5 million, but could be extended), Young ($14.1 million), Satoransky ($10 million), Patrick Williams ($7.4 million), Coby White ($5.8 million) and Troy Brown Jr. ($5.1 million).
That list will likely grow to eight guaranteed players with Al-Farouq Aminu holding the player option at $10.1 million.
The Bulls do have the team option on Ryan Arcidiacono at $3 million.
If Karnisovas is looking to deepen his payroll pockets and pursue a point guard like Ball on the market, waiving Young and Satoransky before free agency would save him an additional $13.1 million.
Three men were shot during a gunfight at a parking garage on a busy Near North Side block Saturday morning, authorities said.
The men were “all shooting at each other” about 9:50 a.m. in the first block of West Grand Avenue, according to preliminary information from Chicago police.
Two men were taken with gunshot wounds in serious-to-critical condition to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, fire officials said. A third was taken to Stroger Hospital in fair-to-serious condition.
A trio of witnesses, who asked not to be named, described what they called a “weird” series of events in the garage connected to a luxury high-rise condominium in a bustling area of River North near Dearborn Street.
Police investigate after a shooting near Grand and Dearborn Saturday morning.Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
The group said they were on their way to their vehicle when they heard what sounded like a car crash.
“I said, ‘Oh no, somebody’s s— got smacked — something happened,'” one witness recalled.
The group also heard two “pops,” which turned out to be gunshots.
When the group drove their car to the third floor of the garage, they saw a vehicle crashed into a cement barrier with its airbags deployed. The witnesses said it was unclear what led up to the crash.
“It didn’t make any sense the way it was crashed,” said one person.
When the group heard another gunshot and someone yell, “Shots fired!” they reversed their car and drove away.
The witnesses told investigators what they saw. Officers told the witnesses that there were four suspects.
It was unclear if anyone was in custody Saturday afternoon.
Police blocked traffic on Grand Avenue between Dearborn Street and Wabash Avenue for the investigation, and pedestrians were blocked from walking on the normally busy stretch of Grand between State Street and Dearborn.
Police investigate after a shooting near Grand and Dearborn Saturday.Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
CTA Red Line trains bypassed the Grand station, causing confusion for some tourists who were left to gawk at the rain-soaked crime scene.
Corey Kaplan, the owner of Corey’s NYC Bagel Deli in River North and Goose Island, said he had just gotten back from a delivery when he saw the first squad car pull up to the garage.
“It’s absolutely mind blowing… and the reason why I say that is because we really try to think that River North is safe, and especially on a Saturday morning at 10 a.m. There’s a lot of kids and families that are walking around, they’re coming out for their normal Saturday morning bagel,” he said.
Kaplan said he had never seen anything like Saturday’s incident in his 10 years in the neighborhood.
“It’s really bizarre and mind-blowing that this could happen,” he said. “But what I think what is safe to say is that no place is safe anymore. It’s really scary.”
At least four people have been killed and 17 others wounded in shootings across Chicago since Friday evening, including a 2-year-old girl who was shot in Little Village on the Southwest Side.
The girl was in the back seat of a car being driven by a male about 6:55 p.m. Friday in the 2800 block of West 26th Street when another vehicle drove up alongside them and someone inside that vehicle started shooting, Chicago police said.
She was shot in the leg and was taken by the driver to Mount Sinai Hospital, where she was in good condition, according to police.
Early Saturday morning, two people were killed and three others wounded in a shooting at a party in Gresham on the South Side.
A 26-year-old man suffered a gunshot wound to the head and was transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead, police said.
A 21-year-old was also struck in the head and taken to the same hospital, where he later died, police said.
A 25-year-old man suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder and was also taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, police said.
Another man, 23, suffered two gunshot wounds to the right arm and was transported to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in critical condition, police said. A fifth man, 21, was struck in the shoulder and listed in fair condition at the same hospital, according to police.
In another fatal shooting, a person was found shot to death about an hour later at a gas station in West Garfield Park.
The male was found about 4:05 a.m. in the parking lot of a gas station in the 400 block of South Kostner Avenue with a gunshot wound to the chest, police said.
He was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital where he was pronounced dead, police said.
Friday night, a man was killed and another injured in a shooting in Belmont Cragin on the Northwest Side.
About 11:50 p.m., officers heard several shots fired and saw an 18-year-old man running with a rifle in the 6200 block of West Diversey Avenue, police said.
Officers placed him under arrest and noticed he had two gunshot wounds to the back and one to the arm, police said. He was transported to Illinois Masonic Medical Center in critical condition.
While searching the area, officers also found a 32-year-old man on the ground with a gunshot wound to the head, police said. He was taken to the same hospital where he was later pronounced dead, police said.
At least 11 other people were wounded in citywide shootings since 5 p.m. Friday.
An Israeli airstrike hits the high-rise building housing The Associated Press’ offices in Gaza City, Saturday, May 15, 2021. | Hatem Moussa/AP
The strike on the high-rise came nearly an hour after the military ordered people to evacuate the 12-story building, which also housed Al-Jazeera, other offices and residential apartments. The strike brought down the entire structure, which collapsed in a gigantic cloud of dust.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — An Israeli airstrike on Saturday targeted and destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets. Hours later, Israel bombed the home of Khalil al-Hayeh, a top leader of Gaza’s ruling militant Hamas group.
The Israeli military said Al-Hayeh’s home served as part of what it said was the militant group’s “terrorist infrastructure.” Al-Hayeh is a senior figure in the Hamas political leadership in Gaza, and the attack marked a further escalation, signaling that Israel is going after Hamas’ top leadership, and not just military commanders. His fate after the strike was not immediately known.
Earlier, AP staffers and other tenants safely evacuated the building after the military telephoned a warning that the strike was imminent within an hour. Three heavy missiles struck the 12-story building, collapsing it in a giant cloud of dust.
For 15 years, the AP’s top-floor office and roof terrace were a prime location for covering Israel’s conflicts with Gaza’s Hamas rulers, including wars in 2009 and 2014. The news agency’s camera offered 24-hour live shots as militants’ rockets arched toward Israel and Israeli airstrikes hammered the city and its surrounding area this week.
“The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today,” AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt said in a statement. “We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza.”
“This is an incredibly disturbing development. We narrowly avoided a terrible loss of life,” he said, adding that the AP was seeking information from the Israeli government and was engaged with the U.S. State Department to learn more.
The building also housed the offices of Qatari-run Al-Jazeera TV, as well as residential apartments. The Israeli military said Hamas was operating inside the building, a standard explanation, and it accused the militant group of using journalists as human shields. But it provided no evidence to back up the claims.
Hours earlier, another Israeli air raid on a densely populated refugee camp killed at least 10 Palestinians from an extended family, mostly children, the deadliest single strike of the current conflict.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists demanded Israel “provide a detailed and documented justification” for the strike.
“This latest attack on a building long known by Israel to house international media raises the specter that the Israel Defense Forces is deliberately targeting media facilities in order to disrupt coverage of the human suffering in Gaza,” the group’s executive director, Joel Simon, said in a statement.
Since Monday night, Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, which has pounded the Gaza Strip with strikes. In Gaza, at least 139 people have been killed, including 39 children and 22 women; in Israel, eight people have been killed, including a man killed by a rocket that hit in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv, on Saturday.
The latest outburst of violence started in Jerusalem and spread across the region over the past week, with Jewish-Arab clashes and rioting in mixed cities of Israel. There were also widespread Palestinian protests Friday in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces shot and killed 11 people.
The spiraling violence has raised fears of a new Palestinian “intifada,” or uprising, when peace talks have not taken place in years. Palestinians on Saturday were marking Nakba (Catastrophe) Day, when they commemorate the estimated 700,000 people who were expelled from or fled their homes in what was now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation. That raised the possibility of even more unrest.
U.S. diplomat Hady Amr arrived Friday as part of Washington’s efforts to de-escalate the conflict, and the U.N. Security Council was set to meet Sunday. But Israel turned down an Egyptian proposal for a one-year truce that Hamas rulers had accepted, an Egyptian official said Friday on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations.
As the hostilities continued, an Israeli bombardment struck a three-story house in Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp on Saturday morning, killing eight children aged 14 and under and two women from an extended family.
Mohammed Hadidi told reporters his wife and five children had gone to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr holiday with her brother’s wife and three of their children. All were killed instantly, he said. The only known survivor from Hadidi’s family was his 5-month-old son Omar; another son, 11-year-old Yahya, was missing, he said.
Children’s toys and a Monopoly board game could be seen among the rubble, as well as plates of uneaten food from the holiday gathering.
“There was no warning,” Jamal Al-Naji, a neighbor living in the same building, said. “You filmed people eating and then you bombed them?” he said, addressing Israel. “Why are you confronting us? Go and confront the strong people!”
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Hamas said it fired a salvo of rockets at southern Israel in response to the airstrike.
The strike on the building housing media offices came in the afternoon, after the owner received a call from the Israeli military warning that the building would be hit within the hour. A video broadcast by Al-Jazeera showed the building’s owner, Jawwad Mahdi, pleading over the phone with an Israeli intelligence officer to wait 10 minutes to allow journalists to go inside the building to retrieve valuable equipment before it is bombed.
“All I’m asking is to let four people … to go inside and get their cameras,” he says. “We respect your wishes, we will not do it if you don’t allow it, but give us 10 minutes.” When the officer rejected the request, Mahdi said, “You have destroyed our life’s work, memories, life. I will hang up, do what you want. There is a God.”
Al-Jazeera, the news network funded by Qatar’s government, broadcast the airstrikes live as the building collapsed.
“This channel will not be silenced. Al-Jazeera will not be silenced,” Halla Mohieddeen. on-air anchorperson for Al-Jazeera English said, her voice thick with emotion. “We can guarantee you that right now.”
Later in the day, the White House responded by saying Israel had a “paramount responsibility” to ensure the safety of journalists covering the spiraling conflict. U.S. President Joe Biden has urged a deescalation in the 5-day conflict between Hamas and Israel, but has publicly backed Israel’s right to self-defense from Hamas rockets fired from Gaza.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted Saturday that the U.S. had “communicated directly to the Israelis that ensuring the safety and security of journalists and independent media is a paramount responsibility.”
A furious Israeli barrage early Friday killed a family of six in their house and sent thousands fleeing to U.N.-run shelters. The military said the operation involved 160 warplanes dropping some 80 tons of explosives over the course of 40 minutes and succeeded in destroying a vast tunnel network used by Hamas.
Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman, said the military aims to minimize collateral damage in striking military targets. But measures it takes in other strikes, such as warning shots to get civilians to leave, were not “feasible this time.”
Israeli media said the military believed dozens of militants were killed inside the tunnels. The Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups have confirmed 20 deaths in their ranks, but the military said the real number is far higher.
Gaza’s infrastructure, already in widespread disrepair because of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade imposed after Hamas seized power in 2007, showed signs of breaking down further, compounding residents’ misery. The territory’s sole power plant is at risk of running out of fuel in the coming days.
The U.N. said Gazans already are experiencing daily power cuts of 8-12 hours and at least 230,000 have limited access to tap water. The impoverished and densely populated territory is home to 2 million Palestinians, most of them the descendants of refugees from what is now Israel.
The conflict has reverberated widely. Israeli cities with mixed Arab and Jewish populations have seen nightly violence, with mobs from each community fighting in the streets and trashing each other’s property.
Late on Friday, someone threw a firebomb at an Arab family’s home in the Ajami neighborhood of Tel Aviv, striking two children. A 12-year-old boy was in moderate condition with burns on his upper body and a 10-year-old girl was treated for a head injury, according to the Magen David Adom rescue service.
The tensions began in east Jerusalem earlier this month, with Palestinian protests against attempts by settlers to forcibly evict a number of Palestinian families from their homes and Israeli police measures at Al-Aqsa Mosque, a frequent flashpoint located on a mount in the Old City revered by Muslims and Jews.
Hamas fired rockets toward Jerusalem late Monday, in an apparent attempt to present itself as the champion of the protesters. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Hamas will “pay a very heavy price” for its rocket attacks.
___
Krauss reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed.
Chicago police investigate a shooting near Dearborn Street and Grand Avenue, May 15, 2021. | Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
The gunshots rang out from a parking garage connected to a luxury high-rise condominium in a bustling area of River North near Dearborn Street.
Three men were shot during a gunfight at a parking garage on a busy Near North Side block Saturday morning, authorities said.
The men were “all shooting at each other” about 9:50 a.m. in the first block of West Grand Avenue, according to preliminary information from Chicago police.
Two men were taken with gunshot wounds in serious-to-critical condition to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, fire officials said. A third was taken to Stroger Hospital in fair-to-serious condition.
The gunshots rang out from a parking garage connected to a luxury high-rise condominium in a bustling area of River North near Dearborn Street.
Officers at the scene told an employee at a nearby business that there were five suspects and two were in custody.
Pat Nabong/Sun-TimesChicago police investigate a shooting near Dearborn Street and Grand Avenue, May 15, 2021.
Red Line trains were bypassing the Grand station as police investigated, according to an alert from the CTA.
Confused tourists trying to find the underground train line gawked at the rain-soaked crime scene. Residents in the area also stopped to try to learn more about what happened.
Police blocked vehicular traffic on Grand Avenue between Dearborn Street and Wabash Avenue. Meanwhile, pedestrians were blocked from walking on Grand Avenue between State Street and Dearborn.
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