Rae Park was apparently just beginning his day.
Surveillance video shows him walking to his minivan, which was parked behind his apartment building on the 2600 block of West Catalpa, around 7:05 a.m. Wednesday.
As Park leans in the vehicle’s driver’s door, a sedan pulls down the alley and comes to a quick stop. The passenger emerges and walks directly toward Park.
He confronts Park and announces a robbery, possibly a carjacking, according to police.
There’s a brief struggle. Then the offender begins shooting. Park, 59, is killed. The murderer runs back to the sedan, which leaves the scene heading east before turning north on Rockwell, according to CPD.
Here is the footage, released by Chicago police early today:
CPD asked officers to be on the lookout for the gunman — a Black male wearing a black hoodie with a Timberland logo on front, light jeans, and white gym shoes — and their vehicle, a gray or silver Kia Forte with an orange dealer plate.
Anyone with information about the murder can call Area Three Detective Morales about case #JE-462052 at 312-744-8261.
Park was the fourth person shot since Friday in the Lincoln Square community area.
A 29-year-old man and a 28-year-old woman were traveling south on Western near Lawrence when someone began shooting at them from a dark-colored sedan around 12:05 a.m. Monday. The woman stopped the car to tend to the male victim just south of the Western Brown Line station, but the gunman’s car returned, and the shooter began firing on her again, a source said.
Police officers in the area heard the gunfire, and one unit followed a vehicle that likely carried the gunman, but a CPD supervisor terminated the engagement as the suspect vehicle headed down the Halsted Street bar strip in Boystown.
An ambulance transported the male victim to St. Francis Hospital in serious condition with three gunshot wounds to his torso. The woman, shot in the hip, was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in fair condition.
On Friday evening, a 26-year-old man dropped off at Swedish Covenant Hospital with gunshot wounds to his chest told police he was shot on the 2700 block of West Foster around 11:19 p.m., according to a CPD statement. Police did not release any other information about the incident.
The Lincoln Square community area has seen six shooting incidents and two murders this year, according to CPD data. That compares to one of each for all of 2020. The area had six shooting incidents and no murders for all of 2019; one shooting incident and two murders in 2018; and three shooting incidents with one murder in 2017 and in 2016. Shooting incidents may involve more than one victim under CPD’s crime reporting protocols.
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