By Andre Salles
The Chicago Sun-Times
AURORA, Ill. — After her daughter was wounded by gunfire Monday morning on Aurora’s east side, a community activist chased after two suspects and helped police make an arrest.
“I thought I would get in trouble for chasing them,” Mary Fultz said. “I wasn’t even thinking that I might get shot. I was thinking, that’s the second one of my kids to be hit.”
In October of 2004, Fultz’s son, then 15, was hit in the leg in a drive-by shooting. That incident spurred Fultz to start her crusade for peace in her neighborhood.
Shots were fired around 11:10 am. Monday outside a duplex home in the 1100 block of Kane Street, said Dan Ferrelli, spokesman of the Aurora Police Department. That home belongs to Fultz’s mother and sister.
Fultz, who was at the home, said her nephew was the intended target. But one of the bullets came through the wall of the house, hitting her 21-year-old daughter in the thigh.
The two suspects, described by police as Hispanic males, ran away.
Fultz, an activist against gang violence who founded the Community Advocacy Awareness Network, said she chased the two to a home in the 1000 block of Fenton Street, leading police there.
Police apprehended one of the suspects, a 15-year-old Aurora male, in a cemetery near the Fenton Street home.
Fultz said her daughter was taken to an Aurora hospital, treated and released.
Police blocked off the intersection of Kane and Trask streets Monday.
SCHOOL PUT ON LOCKDOWN
Leachele Whitehead, who lives just south of the intersection on Trask Street, said she heard the shooting. She said she bundled her daughter into the basement, certain that shots were being fired right outside her door.
“I heard someone scream, ‘They shot my sister! They shot my sister!’ ” she said.
Nearby Edna M. Rollins Elementary School, at Kane and Ohio streets, was placed on lockdown after the shooting, said Principal Karen Hart.
Copyright 2008 The Chicago Sun-Times