ROGERS PARK — A rash of shootings in the neighborhood, including two incidents overnight that left a woman and a man with gunshot wounds, has some residents saddened, scared and frustrated.
A 25-year-old woman was sitting in her car about 1:49 a.m. Friday in the 6600 block of North Sheridan Road when a man in a truck pulled up beside her and fired multiple shots before fleeing, said Officer Ron Gaines, a Chicago Police Department spokesman.
The woman was struck in her leg and taken to Evanston Hospital in good condition, Gaines said.
No one is in custody for the shooting, he said.
Hours earlier, a 21-year-old man was shot in the 1600 block of Morse Avenue, said Officer Janel Sedevic, a Police Department spokeswoman.
Around 8:05 p.m., the man was walking on Morse Avenue when another man approached from an alley, began firing shots and then ran off, Sedevic said. The 21-year-old was struck in his cheek and taken to St. Francis Hospital in stable condition, Sedevic said.
No one is in custody for the shooting, and detectives are investigating, she said.
Resident Anne Heathcock, 31, said she was leaving a CeaseFire event at the Mayne Stage down the block shortly after the shooting happened.
"This violence really scares us," said Heathcock, the mother of 15-month-old son. "It’s tragic and sad to me that I don’t feel safe bringing my son out of the house. I want to take my son to the park, in the summer especially."
The violence comes on the heels of a Monday shooting inside a convenience store in the 1600 block of West Howard Street that killed one man and wounded two others. Darnall Gordon, 36, was killed when someone from across the street pulled out a gun and opened fire through the windows of the store, police said.
"I was just waiting for something to happen, and it finally did," Toni Duncan, the CAPS beat facilitator for the Howard area, said earlier this week. "Again, it’s just another blatant disregard for humanity."
On March 28, a father and a son were shot about a block away from Thursday night's shooting on Morse Avenue.
At least five people have been killed by gunfire in the Rogers Park neighborhood in the last year, including a 17-year-old Amundsen High School student who was killed in February.
Heathcock said she was no stranger to Chicago street violence.
In 2012, her boyfriend, Walter McLemore, was shot to death across the street from Truman College in Uptown. She said McLemore had gotten into a fistfight before the shooting.
"My boyfriend was shot in broad daylight, next to a fire station. It’s not right, it’s not fair," she said. "It’s sad that I have to change the way I live my life, and change the way my son lives his life, to be safe in our own neighborhood."
John Warner, a CAPS beat facilitator for the Morse Avenue area, said he was concerned the recent shootings in the neighborhood could be a bad sign of things to come.
"It’s getting crazy again," Warner said Friday morning, adding that the street violence seemed more frequent now than it had been in the last two spring seasons.
Warner said the violence reminded him of the beginning of 2011.
"We can’t let it go back to there. The neighbors have got to come together. We’ve got to come together and stop it," he said.
