A beautiful evening on a Chicago restaurant patio turned into a nightmare when a gunman in an SUV opened fire on patrons seated outside Aberdeen Tap on Friday evening. A bullet struck the restaurant’s manager in her leg. She’s recovering. But surveillance video shared with CWB Chicago shows it all could have been much worse.
“The shooter rolled down the window [of an SUV] and yelled, ‘What the f*ck are you looking at?’ before unloading a clip into a group full of innocent people,” we were told.
The video shows groups of friends kicking back and enjoying a summer evening on the restaurant’s sidewalk cafe, which lines the 1100 block of West Hubbard in the West Loop. Strings of overhead lights and a patio umbrella, folded for the beautiful weather, sway gently in the light breeze.
Across the street, a white SUV sits in the traffic lane. Witnesses said it is the vehicle the gunman fired from. Three people—possibly two Hispanic men and a Hispanic woman—were inside.
“They were screaming and arguing for close to two minutes while stopped at the stop sign,” Aberdeen Tap’s general manager said on social media Saturday. She happened to be working as a server on the patio at the time of the shooting.
“I had a full patio, and people were watching this altercation the entire time,” she continued. “The male in the back left seat [of the SUV] saw everyone watching and proceeded to scream out the window at us, asking WTF we were looking at over and over again.”
She said he flashed his gun out the window and then opened fire on the patio as his driver pulled away. The woman recalled hearing four shots, but an officer at the scene said cops found 13 shell casings in the street.
“Luckily, I am the only one who got shot. And luckily I am still alive. The bullet hit my lower left calf and just missed my bone and an artery,” the manager said.
“This post isn’t to gain sympathy or pity. It is to call out this wild west city that Chicago has become. It is to call out the people who are in charge. The ‘leaders’ who should be doing something.”
The woman included a picture with her story. It showed a gaping bullet hole on the outside of her left calf.
“VOTE THESE CLOWNS OUT OF OFFICE OR WE WILL ALL BE PAYING THE PRICE FOR THE NEXT 4 YEARS,” she pleaded at the end of her post.
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