Update January 27, 2022, 9:45 a.m. — Low-quality video has emerged of the incident. Story here.
Chicago police exchanged gunfire with the occupants of a hijacked car in the Loop on Wednesday evening, leaving one man injured, according to a preliminary statement from CPD. Two other men who were in the allegedly stolen car are in custody, and officers recovered two guns at the scene, police said. No officers were struck by gunfire, but ambulances took two to hospitals for minor injuries.
Around 8:45 p.m., patrol officers were notified that a license plate reader detected a carjacked vehicle traveling on Lower Wacker Drive. CWBChicago reported last week that the car was taken in an armed hijacking on the 1400 block of West Farwell in Rogers Park.
Cops caught up with the vehicle, a 2011 Honda Accord, on the 200 block of East Lower Wacker Drive and began to approach the car on foot at a red light, according to police and a witness.
“As officers approached the vehicle, there was an exchange of gunfire with the occupants in the vehicle. During this exchange, a male offender was struck,” the CPD statement said.
According to initial information from the scene, the injured man, age 24, was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital with gunshot wounds to his chest, leg, and a graze wound to the side of his head. An officer at the hospital said he was in fair condition, but the CPD statement said the man’s condition was “unknown.”
Chicago’s police oversight agency, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, is investigating the incident. CPD officers involved in shootings are placed on administrative duties for 30 days.
The owner of the Honda Accord told police that a white four-door sedan blocked his path on the 1400 block of West Farwell around 6:10 a.m. last Tuesday as he was driving to a work site. A CPD spokesperson told CWBChicago after the hijacking that four hijackers stepped out of the sedan and demanded control of the victim’s vehicle at gunpoint. He complied, and they fled south with his car. The car that boxed him in continued heading west.