A woman sobbing hysterically ran under the police tape and was quickly surrounded by officers. A few moments later, she cried: “They killed my daughter. That’s my baby. That’s my baby.”
Three women and a man were shot and killed, and four other people were seriously wounded, when an argument broke out inside a home in Englewood on the South Side early Tuesday, according to Chicago police.
The four were pronounced dead shortly before 6 a.m. at the scene, a two-story house with a gray stone front in the 6200 block of South Morgan Street.
Chicago police spokesman Tom Ahern initially said all four were women, but he was corrected by Police Supt. David Brown at a news conference.
Four other people were taken to hospitals, at least two of them in critical condition:
- A woman was taken in critical condition to the University of Chicago Hospital.
- A 23-year-old man went to St. Bernard Hospital with a gunshot wound to the back. He was taken to University of Chicago Hospital also in critical condition.
- A 41-year-old man suffered a gunshot wound to the back of the head was was taken to Christ Hospital.
- A 25-year-old man suffered a gunshot wound to the back of the head. He was also taken to Christ.
- A 2-year-old girl was taken from the home and brought to Comer Children’s Hospital for observation but did not appear injured, police said.
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Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
A witness told police there were two volleys of gunshots inside the home, hours apart.
The first was around 2 am, when Brown said the ShotSpotter system alerted police to gunfire near the Morgan address. Brown did not say if police responded to the alert.
The witness heard shots again around 5 a.m., around the time officers arrived to find the eight victims. Police found shell casings inside the house and a large-capacity “drum magazine.”
There was no sign of forced entry, Brown said. At least one of the victims likely lived at the address, but Brown did not elaborate on the relationships of the victims and the shooter.
Brown said the victims taken to hospitals had not yet been interviewed by detectives, and the investigation still was “very preliminary.”
“All we know about this residence is there’s been several calls there for disturbances,” Brown told reporters. “Overall, the block where this residence is located is fairly quiet, not much activity going on that requires a police response.
“I can reassure the public that there will be an increased police presence in the area until we’re able to identify offenders, if possible, or what, exactly, happened inside,” he said.
As officers continued working the scene into the morning, the family of one of the victims who died, Denice Mathis, approached the cordoned off section of South Morgan. Some sobbed. Others cursed at the tragedy of what happened.
The family said Mathis, in her early 30s, was a devoted mother of four sons and a daughter. On Monday, she’d been up at Six Flags with her boys.
“She was a good person — a free-spirited person,” said a cousin, Vickie Smith. “She loved her family.”
Mathis lived on the South Side, but the family didn’t know what brought her to the gathering on South Morgan.
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Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
A man who said he was Mathis’ brother said his sister had been to the house many times before. The place was home to a barber, and a lot of people went there to get their hair cut.
“She was a good girl — none of these knuckleheads,” the brother said.
Earlier Tuesday, a woman sobbing hysterically ran under the police tape blocking the entrance to South Morgan at West 63rd. She was quickly surrounded by police and guided back behind the tape.
A few moments later, she cried: “They killed my daughter. That’s my baby. That’s my baby.”
The woman then got in a truck, along with community activist Andrew Holmes and was seen driving away.
Holmes later said he spoke with family who were still waiting to learn if their relatives were among those killed. He lamented that people in Chicago have to be wary when gathering because of the risk of mass shootings.
“If people are gathering anywhere, you have to be very cautious now because people could discharge a weapon at any moment,” Holmes said. “It’s very dangerous. They don’t care who’s in that crowd, whether it’s a grandmother or child.”
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Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
The attack is the third mass shooting in Chicago in little over a week, and came just hours after gunfire erupted at a party in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the South Side.
In that shooting, a man was killed and two women wounded around 11 p.m. Monday in the 5200 block of South Lowe Street, police said.
Early Saturday, a woman was killed and nine others wounded near 75th Street and South Prairie Avenue. Kimfier Miles, 29, a mother of three, was out with a group of girlfriends when two men opened fire about 2 a.m. Saturday.
Struck in her leg and abdomen, Miles was rushed to the University of Chicago Medical Center and pronounced dead, according to police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
“She was only 29; in the prime of her life,” her cousin Takita Miles told the Chicago Sun-Times. “She hasn’t even experienced life. She just started traveling. It’s unfortunate. It’s really bad.”
The weekend before, six men and two women were wounded in a shooting in Burnside on the South Side.
The group were standing in the sidewalk about 4 a.m. June 6 when two people inside a silver-colored car opened fire in the 8900 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue, Chicago police and Fire officials said.
A database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University that tracks mass killings — defined as four or more dead, not including the perpetrator — shows this is the 18th mass killing, of which 17 were shootings, so far this year in the U.S.
Tuesday’s shooting happened in the Englewood police district, which has seen a 20% decrease in murders this year through Sunday, compared with the same time in 2020, according to police statistics. Shootings, however, have increased 16% so far compared with the year before.
This is a developing story, check back for details.
