Melissa Jenco, Chicago Tribune –
Chicago police are still searching for the gunmen in a pair of shooting incidents in a South Side neighborhood that hadn’t seen much of that kind of violence until Sunday.
A Sunday night shooting, in which an 11-year-old girl was among the four victims, and a Sunday morning shooting that left a south suburban man dead in his car in a school parking lot left people in the Pill Hill neighborhood worried. Chicago police data shows the small neighborhood has one of the lowest crime rates on the South Side and has had only two homicides dating back to 2008, according to Tribune homicide numbers.
“I’m just so alarmed about it because we don’t have that kind of stuff going on around here…,” said Michelle McNeal, 54, who has lived on Chappel Avenue, the scene of both shootings, for more than 40 years.
“It’s a quiet neighborhood and everybody has been knowing each other a long time.”
McNeal said she heard about 10 shots from Sunday night’s shooting, but didn’t see what took place at the party on the 9100 block of Chappel that was interrupted with gunfire about 10:45 p.m. Sunday. Four people were shot, including a 16-year-old boy wounded in the back, an 18-year-old man struck in the right elbow, a 51-year-old woman hit in the buttocks, and an 11-year-old girl whose left calf was grazed by a bullet.
At the brick home Monday morning, a football and small soccer ball sat in the yard and faded pink and yellow chalk drawings decorated the sidewalk. A man with a bandaged elbow sat briefly on the front porch, but he and others at the house refused to comment other than one woman saying the family is “fine.”
The other shooting occurred early Sunday morning just a block away in the parking lot of Warren Elementary School. Jeffrey Smith, 38, of the 25000 block of Taft Street in south suburban Monee, was shot to death in his car about 3 a.m. Police said he had crack cocaine in his hand and more next to his body.
Chicago Police Department Officer Jose Estrada would not say whether police believe the two shootings are connected and he would not speculate as to a motive for the violence.
Residents who live on the block say it has long been a quiet neighborhood. While some said they continue to see it that way, others said they have seen an uptick in what they believe is gang activity in the past month.
Anti-violence activist Andrew Holmes was passing out flyers on the block Monday morning. He and a man who lives on the block but did not want to be named both said people they believe to be gang members have been riding into the area on bikes and breaking into homes and garages as well as firing shots in the neighborhood in recent weeks.
A woman on the block who also did want to give her name, heard about nine shots Sunday night. The longtime resident said she is concerned about the changes she has seen in recent weeks and plans to attend a Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy meeting to find out what she can do.
“I don’t want to let these thugs run us out,” she said.
Edward Morgan, 82, has lived in the neighborhood at least 40 years and echoed neighbors’ sentiments, but still said he was not entirely surprised by Sunday night’s violence.
“I feel like it’s just a matter of time,” he said. “It’s going to happen to any neighborhood anywhere.”
