A 16-year-old boy was shot by several people who got out of a light-colored vehicle in Chicago’s West Pullman neighborhood Tuesday night, leaving him with a graze wound to the stomach and a gunshot wound to his left forearm. Police say the teen was outside on the 11700 block of South Normal Avenue at 8:23 p.m. when the group opened fire. He was taken to Christ Medical Center, where police listed him in good condition. No one has been taken into custody.
The shooting was first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, which cited Chicago police in detailing the teen’s injuries and hospitalization. The 11700 block of South Normal Avenue sits within West Pullman on the Far South Side, an area that falls under the jurisdiction of the Chicago Police Department’s 5th District and its Area 2 Detectives, according to the department. Christ Medical Center, in suburban Oak Lawn, is a Level 1 trauma center that regularly receives critically injured gunshot victims from the Far South Side, per the State of Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board.
A Corridor With a Violent Recent Past
Tuesday’s shooting came just a day after a separate, more severe attack a few blocks away. On August 17, three armed assailants ambushed two people in the 11100 block of South Normal Avenue in neighboring Roseland — six blocks north of Tuesday’s scene — leaving both victims critical, Hoodline previously reported in its story on the Roseland ambush shooting. It remains an open question whether investigators suspect any connection between the two shootings along the South Normal Avenue corridor, and police have not released a more detailed description of the light-colored vehicle involved in Tuesday’s attack.
West Pullman has seen a string of violent incidents in recent months. On July 29, a 43-year-old man was killed after being shot in the chest in West Pullman during an overnight wave of South Side gun violence that wounded 11 people, according to FOX 32 Chicago; no suspects were taken into custody in that case. Weeks earlier, on July 9, two 35-year-old men sitting in an SUV were critically injured on the 11600 block of South Ada Street after a gunman opened fire and left more than two dozen shell casings at the scene, per CBS Chicago.
Teenagers Repeatedly Targeted
Tuesday’s victim is not the first teenager caught up in West Pullman gun violence this year. In February, a 16-year-old boy was shot after running from two armed suspects who tried to rob him at gunpoint, the Chicago Sun-Times reported at the time. That pattern of violent encounters involving young people in the neighborhood has persisted even as citywide numbers tell a more complicated story…