Chicago neighbors run from one shooting to the next

© Hannah Leone/Chicago Tribune/TNS A 17-year-old boy kneels on the sidewalk on the east side of Laramie Avenue just north of…

By Hannah Leone, Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO

Neighbors were still watching police work the scene of a shooting in Chicago when three gunshots rang out. They sounded close.

"That's the gas station across the street," a woman said. "Oh my God."

She and others ran toward the new crime scene, arriving before police had taped it off.

The shootings occurred in the span of two hours, a half a mile apart, in an area of Chicago that has seen the most violence this year.

The first attack occurred around 9:40 p.m. as a 51-year-old woman and a 29-year-old man were standing outside in the 1000 block of North Lockwood Avenue, according to Chicago police. Two men approached and started shooting, hitting the woman in the hand and buttocks and the man in the back and wrist.

The woman was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in serious condition, and the man was transported there in critical condition.

As police interviewed residents, a handful of neighbors lingered outside the yellow crime scene tape surrounding a section of the street and three houses on the east side of the block. A small group sat on the porch of the middle house.

A few people remained on Lockwood when the shots were fired at the Laramie Citgo on the corner of Laramie and Chicago avenues around 11:45 p.m.

At least three of them bolted to the gas station. Down the block, a wounded teen was bent over on his knees on the sidewalk on the east side of Laramie Avenue. The 17-year-old leaned against a short fence surrounding a patch of grass in between the sidewalk and street.

Witnesses said he ran north from the gas station and collapsed.

The boy had been walking with someone who took out a gun and shot him, hitting both knees and his left ankle, police said.

He was wearing a white T-shirt and shoes. Medics hoisted him onto a stretcher, wheeled him toward an ambulance and took him to Mount Sinai hospital, where police said he was stable.

Police initially taped off a small triangle in the gas station parking lot, then expanded it to enclose the entire lot, including the station's convenience store.