A 15-year-old boy was shot Sunday afternoon while sitting near a sidewalk in the 1900 block of West Cermak Road on Chicago’s Lower West Side, according to police. The shooting happened around 3:30 p.m. when someone in a nearby car opened fire, striking the teen before the vehicle fled the scene.
The boy was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was listed in good condition, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Detectives are investigating the shooting, though no suspect description or motive has been released. Stroger Hospital, formally known as John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, operates a major public Level 1 Trauma Center about 1.5 miles north of the shooting scene and regularly treats gunshot victims from Chicago’s West Side, according to MentalHealthFacilities.net.
The 1900 block of West Cermak Road falls within the Chicago Police Department’s 12th (Near West) District, with felony investigations in the Lower West Side and Pilsen handled by Area Three Detectives, per the Chicago Police Department. The corridor has seen scattered violent incidents in recent years. In July 2024, officers arrested a suspect on the same block during a traffic stop. They recovered a loaded .38-caliber handgun that prosecutors said was tied to a shooting outside a nearby migrant shelter, according to CWB Chicago.
A Corridor With a History of Violent Crime
Further back, the block was also the site of a November 2023 armed robbery in which thieves stole an ATM from a currency exchange during a one-hour crime spree that hit 12 victims across the West Side, as detailed by CBS News. That spree involved masked gunmen driving sedans through the area. Just over a week ago, a 35-year-old man was shot dead by an approaching group elsewhere on West Cermak Road in Lawndale, a case Hoodline covered in its report on the Lawndale shooting death…