AUSTIN — TaJuana Dandridge doesn't let her 12-year-old son play outside their Austin home, he can't walk to Galewood Park, which is barely a block from their home, and every day she drives him to and from school.
But even that couldn't stop the 40-year-old mother's mind from racing when the sound of a gunshot interrupted her as she rested at home Tuesday afternoon.
"My first thought was, 'What if my son was out there?' " said Dandridge, who also has a 19-year-old son. "It's scary. Very scary when you have a 12-year-old son, and I can't even let him play out front. It's difficult enough for a child. I already don't let them outside."
It wasn't her son who was hit by the bullet she heard being fired Tuesday — but it was a child about the same age.
An 11-year-old was hit in the shooting in the 1800 block of North Monitor Avenue. He was shot in the buttocks, and a 19-year-old man nearby was hit in the arm. Both survived and are recovering at West Suburban Hospital.
Dandridge was fortunate. Her son was safely in a classroom miles away at a school outside the neighborhood. But that did nothing to ease her stress as she watched the wounded young boy's mom move him from the intersection of Cortland Avenue and Monitor Avenue into her van, she said.
It was around 2:45 p.m. Tuesday when the two were shot as they stood on the street. No one has been arrested in the shooting.
"It's a lot to digest. It's very scary and makes me want to move. It really just confirmed the idea that it's time to move," Dandridge said.
In her 30 years of living in Austin, she said she doesn't remember a single shooting on the block, so her initial response after hearing the "pop" sound was confusion.
"Oh my God, I know they're not shooting outside my house," she thought as she walked from the front window to her front yard, where neighbors confirmed her worst fears. "We never have any problems on this end."
Neighbors told her someone shot the boys from inside a car that drove by the corner — a corner Dandridge's mother had walked by on her way home from radiation treatment barely five minutes before the shooting, she said.
"It's scary when you hear about what happens in Chicago. You fear going into different neighborhoods. But once you start fearing your neighborhood becoming a crime scene it's really scary," she said.
"I'm just scared for my sons."
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