LITTLE ITALY — Gunshots fired on a leafy street in Little Italy left a bullet hole in the car door of an aide to Ald. Danny Solis and left residents of a normally quiet street nervous.
Police said four shots were fired at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday on the 800 block of South Laflin Street, just down the street from busy Taylor Street and popular nightspots like the upscale Rosebud restaurant and Hawkeye's sports bar.
Janet Esposito, an assistant in Solis' 25th Ward office, said she heard the shots from inside her home on the street, which includes $500,000 townhomes in the Campus Green complex and pricey brownstones as well as buildings rented to University of Illinois at Chicago students.
“I don’t even know what a gunshot sounds like,” Esposito said. “I went to the window and I heard six bangs. My husband said, ‘Get away from the window, that’s gunfire.’”
The shots left a bullet hole on the bottom of her passenger side door.
Police said the bullets were not targeted at Esposito but weren't sure what happened. They said they have recently been monitoring a troubled house on that block, although they could not say if the house was directly connected to the shootings.
A lifelong resident of the neighborhood, who was walking his dog on the block Friday, said although it's normally quiet, there's a home where neighbors believe drugs are being sold.
"Yeah, they sell drugs out of there," he said. "Everyone in this neighborhood knows that."
A manager at Rosebud, though, said Friday they hadn't had any problems in the area.
Esposito said she's not worried.
"It was an isolated incident. It had to be something really silly because people over there don’t do that. I'm pretty sure it'll be okay," she said.
Stacy Raker, a spokeswoman for Solis — who has represented the area for years although it won't be a part of his ward under the upcoming 2015 remap — also said the alderman considered the situation an isolated incident.
“He’s aware of and monitoring the situation. Any crime is a concern to the office,” Raker said.
No arrests have been made in connection to the shooting.
