AVONDALE — Salvador Flores stood outside his Avondale home Saturday and pointed to the spot where his brother-in-law, Uriel Guadarramo, had fallen after being shot in the chest Friday evening.
Flores said he had looked out his window on the 2800 block of North Spaulding Avenue just before 8 p.m. Friday to see Guadarramo, 36, at the front gate talking with a neighborhood friend named Raul.
Ten minutes later, Flores heard five or six shots ring out on the quiet residential block.
"I hear Raul screaming my sister's name to come out," Flores recalled. "I ran up and looked out the window, and he was already laid out on the ground."
Police said a gunman emerged from between two parked cars and opened fire on two men. A 36-year-old man was fatally shot in his chest, and a 61-year-old man was shot in his lower right leg and suffered a graze wound to the back of his head.
Guadarramo was one of three people killed in gun violence Friday and Saturday.
Flores ran outside and held Guadarramo in his arms, trying to prop him up to prevent Guadarramo from coughing up too much blood.
Flores said he tried to keep his brother-in-law conscious as he held him.
"I don't know if he was trying to talk to me. I couldn't hear anything," he said.
An ambulance took Guadarramo to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 8:44 p.m., according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's office.
But Flores said he already knew brother-in-law was gone when responders put a sheet over Guadarramo in the ambulance.
"I knew right then and there," he said.
Flores' eyes were glazed Saturday as he remembered Guadarramo, whom he had known since he was four years old. Guadarramo and his sister had been married for about 15 years. The two met when they were both 15 years old, he said.
"He pretty much raised me," Flores said of Guadarramo. "He wasn't my brother-in-law. He was my brother."
Guadarramo leaves behind two young children: a 12-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son.
On Saturday, a small memorial of candles and notes stood in the grass just outside the gate where Guadarramo was shot.
After the shooting, police had asked Flores if Guadarramo may have had a conflict with anyone from the neighborhood, but Flores said Guadarramo was a family man who had lived in the neighborhood his whole life.
Guadarramo was a self-employed construction worker who worked long days and enjoyed hosting barbecues for his family, Flores said.
"He was a fun person, a hard-working person who loved his family," he said. "He struggled to make a life for him and his family."
Neighbors said Saturday there may be shootings in the neighborhood every so often, especially in the summertime, but not on the 2800 block of North Spaulding Avenue.
"It's scary," one neighbor who declined to be named said as small children played across the street.
Flores agreed, saying he would not wish what his family is going through on anyone else.
"It's everywhere," he said of gun violence in Chicago. "The last place you would expect it, it happens."
