A man was shot and killed during a fight inside the J. Parker rooftop lounge at Hotel Lincoln, 1816 North Clark, overnight, according to Chicago police.
The men were physically fighting when one pulled out a gun and shot the other in the chest around 1:21 a.m., Chicago police said. EMS took the 35-year-old victim to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where he died. The Cook County medical examiner’s office identified the victim as Cordaryl Allen of Roseland.
Witnesses said the gunman fled onto Clark Street and headed south after the shooting. After reviewing surveillance video, an officer radioed that the gunman is a Black male who wore a tan hoodie with cutoff sleeves. It had a design on the front, and he had the hood cinched around his face. The suspect also wore dark jeans and a red belt that appeared to be embedded with red stones, the officer said.
The shooting occurred less than a month after hotel management announced plans to add 1,700 square feet to the rooftop bar’s service areas.
“I don’t think adding these rooftops will make the situation so much worse than what we have now,” hotel General Manager Dan White told a meeting of local residents in September, according to Block Club Chicago. “We are what we are now, and these two additions aren’t going to turn things into chaos. We want to control what we are now, and we want to develop these two really cool rooftop areas into a place where people can enjoy what I believe is one of the most amazing views of the city.”
Sunday’s shooting is the fourth of the year in Lincoln Park, which had 15 shooting victims at this point last year. Last year’s total included a mass shooting with eight victims in the 1600 block of North LaSalle.
The J. Parker rooftop’s name is derived from John Frederick Parker, a Washington DC police officer who was assigned to protect President Abraham Lincoln on the night Lincoln was assassinated. Parker, according to legend, left Lincoln unprotected at the Ford Theater to grab a drink at a nearby bar.
In a nod to that story, the J. Parker bar’s photo gallery now features a man wearing a t-shirt that reads, “making history, one shot at a time.”
The bar will be closed on Sunday and Monday nights, according to updates posted to its social media channels.