By Alexandra Chachkevitch and Jeremy Gorner
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — A man is in custody after being accused of firing shots at Chicago police officers and grazing one police officer in the face Tuesday evening in the Rosemoor neighborhood on the South Side, police said.
The incident started just after 10 p.m. as 22nd District patrol officers investigated a possible carjacking in the area of 103rd Street and Lowe Avenue, according to police.
The officers saw a vehicle that fit the description and tried to stop it, but the man behind the wheel stuck a gun out the window and fired shots at their squad car while driving in the 600 block of East 100th Place, according to a statement from the Chicago Police Department.
One of the bullets struck the squad car and grazed one of the officers in the face.
Officers in another nearby police squad car observed the shooting and returned gunfire. The suspect fired multiple times at the second squad car as well, Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said.
The suspect was not hit, but he crashed his vehicle in the 10000 block of South Eggleston Avenue and tried to run away. Officers took the man, who is on parole, into custody a short time later, according to a police source. A 9mm handgun was recovered at the scene of the shooting, police said.
The wounded police officer, who is in his early 30s, was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center. His injury was not life-threatening, Johnson said. No one else was injured as a result of the shooting.
“The officer is expected to be okay,” said Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. “We’re just so incredibly happy (it wasn’t worse)... It just came really close.”
Johnson, who stood in a baseball cap and plain clothes outside Advocate Christ late Tuesday evening, also expressed relief that the shooting didn’t turn out worse.
“It just goes to show you again how people are out here with all these weapons, and they’re not afraid to use them,” Johnson said. “The same individuals, repeat gun offenders, continuously create havoc in our neighborhoods and we just have to send them a message that we’re sick of it and we should be.”
At the scene of the shooting in the 600 block of East 100th Place, officers cordoned off evidence with yellow crime tape.
Several nearby residents gathered near the crime tape to see what happened.
Vivian Reid, 80, said she and her son, who live on the block, heard several shots while they stood outside their home.
“It was bam-bam-bam, and then police came out of everywhere,” she said.
Reid, who has lived on the same block since 1967, said she has never seen anything similar happen next to her home.
“It’s getting bad over here,” she said as she stood on the porch of her home with her hands on her hips. A week ago, Reid said she was in her backyard when she heard a series of gunshots that killed Demarco Kennedy, 32, four blocks south.
Kennedy was shot in the neck as he sat at a table in his second-floor apartment in the 600 block of East 102nd Place around 8:10 p.m. on Aug. 9.
Reid said the recent incidents make her scared, but she is not planning on moving out of the neighborhood.
“I don’t bother nobody, and I’m close to God,” she said and smiled.