Update July 7 — The boy has been identified by family members as Anthony Mendoza.
A 15-year-old boy was shot and killed while sitting on a bench inside Warren Park on Tuesday afternoon, Chicago police said. The local alderman said she was told that the murder was an “isolated and targeted incident.”
The boy was with friends near the bike path in the southeast corner of the park, 6601 North Western Avenue, when the gunman approached and fired shots at him around 1:51 p.m. Police said the boy suffered a gunshot wound to his right shoulder and later died at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston.
Officers on the scene said witnesses were unable to provide a description of the offender.
“The police are saying [it] was an isolated and targeted incident,” Ald. Debra Silverstein (50th) said in an email to her constituents. “There is currently no danger to the general public.”
“I grieve for the victim and for all of the youth who get caught in our city’s cycle of gun violence,” she wrote.
“I am very disturbed and angry by the brazenness of this shooting—that it would happen in the middle of the day in one of our neighborhood parks.”
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