BRONZEVILLE — Students at the Illinois Institute of Technology were returning to normal Friday after a shooting Thursday afternoon just north of the campus prompted a school alert.
Chicago Police confirmed Friday that 20-year-old Darian Gunn was shot Thursday at about 3:30 p.m. on the 3000 block of South Michigan Avenue, just north of the IIT baseball field. According to police, he was approached on foot by an African-American male who shot him and then fled with an accomplice in a dark sedan west on Cermak Road. Gunn was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead about 45 minutes after the shooting.
Police officials said they did not issue any formal alerts to IIT, whose campus extends south on Michigan Avenue to 35th Street, nor to Dunbar Vocational Career Academy, 3000 S. King Drive.
IIT, however, did issue a campus alert at about 5:30 p.m., advising students to "exercise caution on/near 31st Street corridor to campus." It also conducted special escorts Thursday evening at 31st and State streets.
Even so, that rattled students on an IIT Facebook page for admitted undergraduates.
"While I am not familiar with IIT's protocol for such situations, and I recognize that it may take time to get official information from the police department, it is concerning that, essentially, there was a two-hour period during which most students had no idea of what happened just a few feet from the edge of campus," wrote IIT alumna Ritika Dhawan. "The alert should have been sent out much sooner, and seeing as the alert did not include any mention of a shooting or specifics of the event, I struggle to see why there was such a significant period of time between the event and the alert."
Jeanne Hartig, the the university's vice president of marketing and communications, repsonded that the university sent the alert out after police said more incidents might be possible following the murder.
"Our protocol is first to get all the facts from the Chicago Police Department," said Hartig. "They were on scene when the shooting occurred. There was no ongoing threat to campus. We issued the alert when CPD alerted us to the potential of additional incidents that might occur on/near the 31st St. corridor based on information they had received. Our 'exercise caution' alert went out immediately upon hearing this additional information."
Hartig said Friday the advice to "exercise caution" was the third and lowest level of formal alert, for an event "usually off campus." It follow alerts for hazardous weather in the area or an actual dangerous situation on campus. She said it was triggered by "additional police chatter" that suggested it might be best to avoid the shooting area for the time being. It was ultimately intended to be advisory and to "stop worry from growing" by being open with students.
According to Hartig, the alert expired Thursday night, and her reading was the campus and students were returning to normal Friday.
Fourth-year students Katherine Hacker and Sean Shukla said the incident was all too normal.
"That stuff actually happens a lot," Shukla said Friday outside IIT's Crown Hall. He said a friend in his studio had recently been mugged at gunpoint on the other side of the Dan Ryan Expressway, losing a computer in the process.
Hacker said IIT's alert system is effective.
"We normally get an alert within an hour or two when something like that happens," she said. Yet she added it was essential to "just be cautious all the time."
Hartig said that "safety is our most important concern. I've worked at at least five or six other universities across the country, and I've always been in urban areas, [and] this is simply one of the safest campuses I've ever worked on."
That's helped in part by the presence of Police Headquarters at the other end of the campus from the shooting on 35th Street.
"It certainly doesn't hurt," Hartig said.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:
