By Peter Nickeas and Elyssa Cherney
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — The two women, mothers of young men, cried and shouted as they stood near the Discount Mega Mall in Little Village Tuesday night. Both heard their sons had been shot.
People around them spoke of a dead boy lying somewhere at the mall on 26th and Whipple streets, killed by police. Someone said four people had been shot. Others drove off to check hospitals.
Finally, an officer yelled to the growing crowd: “Nobody was shot. You can all go home. Nobody was shot.”
But the yelling and confusion continued into the night, fueled by rumors that drew more and more angry people to the streets. Scattered skirmishes broke out with police as Facebook posts titled “Rest in Peace” named two neighborhood men supposedly shot by officers.
When things calmed down two hours later, eight officers had been sent to hospitals with injuries ranging from a broken hand to cuts on the face.
Eleven people, including three 14-year-olds and a 15-year-old, were arrested and charged with counts ranging from aggravated battery to a police officer to resisting arrest and reckless conduct, according to police.
“It just shows you the mentality of folks in some of our neighborhoods,” Chicago police superintendent Eddie Johnson said Wednesday as he once again denied police shot anyone. “The majority of the people that live in these neighborhoods are really good people. And they’re sick and tired of seeing that kind of crap.”
The confrontation started just after 8:50 p.m. Tuesday when officers answered a call of shots in the 2600 block of South Albany Avenue, an area claimed by the Satan Disciples, according to police.
Someone heard gunfire and then saw a car speeding away near 24th Street and Washtenaw Avenue, police said. The corner has seen dozens of shootings in a decades-long conflict between the Disciples and the Latin Kings to the west.
Last week, a young man was killed in an alley in an area claimed by Latin Kings. Since then, there have been at least four shootings in neighborhoods next to Little Village claimed by rivals of the Latin Kings, including one a block from where police answered the call Tuesday night.
Responding officers chased a car along 26th Street to Albany Avenue near the Discount Mega Mall. Police have not provided details about the chase, except to say officers fired at the car as it sped toward them and they feared “they would be pinned between vehicles.”
The department said no one was hit by the shots. Officers asked for dogs and a helicopter to help search the area. On 26th Street, police stretched tape from the mall parking lot to shops north of there, leaving people to gather under the arch that welcomes people to La Villita.
Young men in the crowded identified themselves as Latin King and shouted “CPDK,” short for “Chicago Police Department Killer.”
As more people showed up, a young man known to neighborhood residents as “TMZ” told people police killed a small boy in the mall parking lot. He said he trying to call the TV stations. As news crews from the stations showed up, after most of the commotion was over, he promised to send them videos.
In one -- shared more than 400 times on Facebook and viewed more than 37,000 times as of Wednesday morning -- he claims the video shows several things it does not:
• “Elderly women, look at this. The police hitting women now.” (The video does not show that.)
• "(Expletive) M-16s here pointing them at people.” (Police don’t carry M16s, and the video does not show them being shouldered or aimed.)
• “Over there, by Albany. Shot and killed someone over there.” (Police have repeatedly denied that, and the video doesn’t show that.)
• “I’m leaning on my car.” (The person who shot the video got to the scene on a moped.)
The man said Wednesday morning he did not want to comment.
TMZ was not the only person to shoot video. At every outburst, a few phones went up. Some people held them chest high to record the interactions with police. Many of the officers wore cameras of their own.
One video, shot by someone else, showed a young woman in the mall parking throwing a beverage at an officer from six or eight feet away.
As the night wore on, “Rest in Peace” messages were posted to Facebook. The common thread among the posts was that two young men were shot, one nicknamed Frosty and the other Papas.
Police brought one man in handcuffs to a squad car at the edge of the crime scene. He yelled that his brother’s car had been shot up and he couldn’t find him.
“Calm down. Calm down,” an officer said.
“I am calm,” the young man yelled.
“My camera’s rolling,” the officer said. “I said it four times. Nobody died.”
“Look man, somebody got blown down not even two blocks away and you only blocked off the alley,” the man said before the officer placed him in the car. “You got six blocks taped off out here.”
“Nobody died.”
“Well, I just want to make sure.”
The crowd moved north. One man said his friend Papas just got knocked out by police with one punch, referring to a young man being held face down until police stood him up and walked him to a waiting prisoner van. Another man was arrested about the same time.
The crowd moved west from Kedzie along 25th street toward Trumbull Avenue. With just a few onlookers left, a woman tried to find out what happened.
Two officers and a sergeant explained to her no one was shot.
“And if your son’s not here, then he’s probably in jail,” the sergeant said. “Nobody got hurt here tonight, except some police by morons who threw beer bottles.”
A lieutenant eventually walked to talk with the woman. He sounded exasperated. He and others had been telling people a version of this for two hours: “I promise you, no one is shot.”
E. Jason Wambsgans contributed to this report
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