CHICAGO — A man was shot and critically wounded near the Cermak CTA station overnight, steps from where a man was shot and killed last weekend, Chicago police said. And a suspect is in custody, thanks to an angry crowd that detained him after the shooting.
Chicago police issued a media statement saying the 31-year-old victim was shot during a fight in the first block of West Cermak around 2:08 a.m. Sunday. He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the head.
Responding officers repeatedly called for back-up at the chaotic scene. Witnesses caught up with the suspected gunman and “kinda stomped him,” an officer radioed after the man was taken into custody.
But a witness told CWBChicago that the crime scene was actually located a block from where CPD said the shooting occurred. Officers marked off a crime scene outside a nightclub on a block where at least two other shootings, including a double murder, have been committed in the past year.
Two people, including an off-duty Cook County correctional officer, were shot outside a nightclub in the first block of East Cermak in February. Police said a gunman fired at them from a pickup truck on the opposite side of Cermak Road early in the morning, hitting them and nearby businesses’ windows.
Last September, two men were killed in a shooting outside Windy City Ribs & Whiskey, which is on the same block. Prosecutors have charged a man named Andre Nelson in connection with that shooting. Officials said Nelson killed two men with a single bullet.