Security video footage from a home behind Lakeview High School captured the sounds of more than 50 gunshots being fired in a manic shootout Monday night that left a 16-year-old boy dead in front of the school, 4015 North Ashland.
“I am incredibly saddened by this needless death and others that are happening too often across the city,” Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) said in a Facebook post on Tuesday. “I will continue to work with the Mayor, the Chicago Police Department and other city department heads to uphold public safety, both within our ward and across the city.”
Authorities had not released the victim’s name as of Tuesday evening.
The video footage clearly shows two figures walking across a parking lot on the east side of the high school as a burst of gunfire rings out around 10:52 p.m. As more shots are fired, the figures duck behind a lone car on the lot. Then, even more shots ring out as tires screech and headlights flash through tree branches.
Both figures bolt north across the parking lot as a barrage of gunfire pours from the street. Then, the gunfire ends. A car is heard driving away and a woman can be heard screaming in shock. The person who provided the video asked to remain anonymous.
Tunney said the high school’s principal and the Town Hall (19th) District police commander “both assured me that the initial investigation points to this shooting being unrelated to the school community.” He said the shooting ended near the school “by happenstance.”
But, for as many gunshots as are heard in the footage, many more were fired between the occupants of two cars during a running gunbattle before they reached the school.
Police began receiving calls of shots fired near Irving Park Road and the Chicago River around 10:50 last night. Responding officers found a stolen white Jeep bearing separately stolen license plates crashed on the corner of Ashland Avenue and Irving Park Road.
The 16-year-old was sitting unresponsive in the Jeep’s passenger seat with multiple gunshot wounds. A spent shell casing was sitting on his shoulder, and bullet holes were visible in some of the school’s windows. CPD said in a media statement that he was shot by someone who was riding in a Dodge sedan.
The driver of the Jeep got out of the crashed SUV and ran away before officers arrived, according to CPD’s statement. Witnesses said he ran north on Ashland. Some witnesses also reported seeing another car stop to pick up two more people who got out of the Jeep.
In addition to nearly two dozen shell casings found at the crash scene, officers reported finding ten shell casings at Irving Park and Rockwell Street, more casings at Irving Park and Campbell Avenue, and still more at Irving Park and Marshfield Avenue.
The shootout occurred along the same stretch of Irving Park Road where another possible rolling gun battle ended with a woman dead after her car was struck by one of the shooters’ vehicles, according to police. The impact threw Janelle Gardiner from the car at Irving Park and Western Avenue around 3:03 a.m. Her driver was taken to a hospital with injures that police said were not life-threatening.
The occupants of the car that struck them climbed into an SUV that stopped to pick them up. No arrests have been made.
Dispatch records show a CPD canine officer saw the occupants of a car shooting at another vehicle as they sped westbound on Irving Park Road from Damen Avenue moments before the crash. Police initially announced that the occupants of a Toyota Camry and a black sedan were shooting at each other, but the department later backed away from that statement and said they were not sure if shots came from two vehicles or only one.
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