EDGEWATER — Just moments before a gunman opened fire Wednesday on Kenmore Avenue, wounding a man in the lower body, he locked eyes with a woman walking down the street.
The gunman "was jumping up and down — for what reason I don’t understand," said the woman, who wished to remain anonymous in fear of retaliation. Meanwhile, the victim "was screaming, 'Don’t kill me, Don’t kill me.' "
The witness said she was walking down the street about 11 p.m. Wednesday when she passed a man in a black hoodie. He had just parked a white Nissan sedan and appeared to be checking a "No Parking" sign on a tree when she passed him.
She said she even tried to give him a friendly warning about the sign as she could relate to the lack of parking in the area.
"Even though I didn’t slow down, I said to him, 'Oh yeah, hey, there's no parking here now. They’re going to be doing something,'" she said Friday. "And he didn’t say anything. We looked each other square in the eye, and he had this look in his eye, like, 'Why are you talking to me?'"
Four paces later, she heard what at first she thought was a car backfire. But when she turned around, she saw the same man standing over another man in a white T-shirt, a gun extended, firing.
"I hit the deck next to the gate," she said, on the east side of Kenmore. Then, a pause for five seconds.
"In those five seconds I decided to run," she said.
She said she made it to a building not far away and hit the buzzer.
The door's buzzer and another volley of gunshots rang out "in concert," she remembered.
She went inside and another woman came into the hallway to tell her she had seen the shooter hopping into a nearby dark green jeep and drive away.
That woman told her she had seen yet another person drag the victim into the shooter's white car and drive off. That car attempted to turn onto Sheridan Road from Ardmore Avenue, the second witness told her, but police stopped them.
The first witness said she later identified the white Nissan to police.
Officer Bari Lemmon, a Chicago Police spokeswoman, said the male victim, 25, was shot in the lower body and back, including the leg, right foot and ankle. He was taken to Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where his condition stabilized.
No charges have been filed in the shooting, police said.
Ald. Harry Osterman (48th) said in an email to constituents Friday that police believed the shooting was "domestic-related."
Another shooting happened on the block on Feb. 25, when two men were shot. Osterman had said that shooting was believed to be gang-related.
"It feels like, though, if this is any indication the last two weeks what it's going to be like when it gets warmer, this is going to be a really bad scene," the first witness said.
But she also said she wouldn't let herself become intimidated by the violence.
"I can't allow myself to be placed in fear ... or allow myself to get pushed out of my home by these simple-minded acts of terrorism," she said.
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