Chicago police and paramedics needed 16 minutes to find a woman who was shot in Washington Park on Friday night because the only 911 caller to report the crime gave police an incorrect address, dispatch records show.

The incident, which occurred in the 5400 block of South Prairie, unfolded in an area previously covered by the city’s ShotSpotter gunfire detection system, which Mayor Brandon Johnson deactivated last September.

At 9:38 p.m., a dispatcher sent officers to the 5300 block of South Indiana after a 911 caller reported that their friend had been shot. Police searched the area and spoke with residents on the block, but they found no evidence of a shooting.

No “shots fired” calls were reported, a dispatcher confirmed, and the absence of ShotSpotter, which could have pinpointed the gunfire, left officers reliant solely on the caller’s information.

Later, at 9:52 p.m., a second 911 caller reported a woman bleeding and unresponsive on a sidewalk in the 5400 block of South Prairie—one block south and one block east of the first location.

Officers arrived on Prairie to find the 20-year-old victim lying next to a single shell casing and a can of mace. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Preliminary investigation suggested the woman was involved in an argument or physical altercation before the shooting, an officer at the scene said. Witnesses described a possible suspect as a 25-year-old man, approximately 6’1”, wearing gray pants and a white t-shirt. No arrests have been made.

The shooting occurred in Ald. Pat Dowell’s ward. Usually an ally of the mayor, Dowell broke ranks last year to join a City Council supermajority that wanted Johnson to keep ShotSpotter active.

“I’m a supporter of ShotSpotter,” she said during a committee hearing in April 2024. “I believe that it works, and in talking to both patrol, street cops, people in the administration, they are supportive of the technology.”

At one point during the hearing, Dowell pointed to a triple shooting in her ward that received an emergency response only because ShotSpotter alerted police to the gunfire.

Earlier this week, cops needed almost 14 minutes to find a man who got shot in the chest because the victim couldn’t tell the 911 operator exactly where he was located.

Brandon’s Bodies

As of 12:01 a.m. on September 23, 2024, Chicago terminated its relationship with ShotSpotter, a gunfire detection system deployed in 12 of the city’s most violence-impacted neighborhoods. ShotSpotter pinpointed the locations of suspected gunfire to exact street addresses and locations within those addresses, such as “in the alley,” “on the sidewalk,” and “on the side of the house.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson stubbornly refused to reconsider his decision to dismantle the system even though the vast majority of aldermen, many citizens, victims advocates, and his handpicked police superintendent asked for it to remain in place.

On this page, CWBChicago tracks incidents of people being found shot in areas previously served by ShotSpotter where the technology, had it not been dismantled, could have played a critical, helpful role. The most common scenarios are likely to be people being found shot without corresponding 911 calls of shots fired and people being found shot in areas where 911 callers provided inaccurate or overly broad locations of gunfire.

Editor’s note: The case previously included as #13 on this list has been removed as of May 21, 2025, because the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office investigation determined the individual died by suicide in a fall from height.

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