ROGERS PARK — A 22-year-old man was seriously injured and a 29-year-old man was hospitalized after a shooting at a Shell gas station Friday night, police said.
Rogers Park Chamber of Commerce officials, who were at the site shortly after the shooting, said the community is being terrorized by gun violence and vowed to improve public safety by holding meetings and installing flood lights in violence-prone areas.
At 11:39 p.m. Friday, two men drove into a gas station in 7100 block of North Sheridan Road and someone in a dark-colored sedan fired at them, said Sgt. Antoinette Ursitti, a Chicago Police spokeswoman.
The driver, a 22-year-old man, was shot in his head and taken to St. Francis Hospital in serious condition. The passenger, a 29-year-old man, received lacerations from broken glass and was taken to St. Francis Hospital, police said.
Bishop James Alan Wilkowski, advisory director for the Rogers Park Chamber of Commerce, was at the site Friday night after he and chamber president Bill Morton heard gunshots from the nearby chamber office. They arrived around the same time as the police, and were told that the shooting victim had died. Police and morgue officials did not confirm the death Saturday morning.
"I did have the opportunity to comfort the young lady who was literally standing in the center of all the shooting," Wilkowski said. He said she had been talking to the shooting victim right before shots were fired and was so shaken she couldn't dial her own phone.
Police had surrounded the area with yellow and red tape, Morton said: "I saw a young man crying and screaming hysterically behind the tape with the police officers, saying, 'That's my brother!'"
A handful of people had gathered around the crime scene, but Wilkowski said a police officer told him that "he's beginning to notice at these shootings that people are not coming to look because of fear of somebody coming back and shooting at bystanders."
He added that people at the scene Friday night would crouch and look around every time there was any popping sound: "It's just no way for people to live their lives."
The area near Touhy and Sheridan is becoming all too familiar with violence, Morton said. There was a shooting on August 30 that injured two people in Leone Beach Park, next to the chamber's office, 7231 N. Sheridan Rd.
"Ever since we came to our office over a year ago, we noticed that this has been a dark corner, dark section of this street," Morton said, "so we put our own flood lights facing outwards from our windows to the gangway." They added an eight-camera security system as well.
Morton, who also is part of the Leone Beach Park Advisory Council, said the council is in early talks with the Chicago Park District about adding flood lights facing west from the field house to help illuminate the area.
The Chamber of Commerce will be hosting public meetings to discuss safety in the area, Morton said. "It's rattling our neighborhood. It's a real public safety issue," he said.
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