OAK LAWN — The mother of a 5-year-old boy shot while walking with a group that included children in a West Pullman park said her son is fighting for his life.
"He's going step-by step," said Jasmine Dillon-Donald of Jaden Donald as she talked to reporters at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn Friday morning.
Jaden was one of three people shot after a family gathering near West Pullman's Cooper Park Friday morning.
He was walking with a group of adults and children, including his mother, after an Independence Day celebration.
About 12:40 a.m., a man approached the group on foot and fired, police said.
Dillon-Donald said she heard about 30 gunshots that sounded like fireworks.
Jaden, youngest of her four children, got the worst of it with a bullet in his abdomen.
Wearing white shorts that were stained with blood, Jaden ran to his mother and said one word: "Momma."
"It makes me want to go back in the house with my children and never come out," Dillon-Donald said.
She lifted Jaden's shirt and saw the bullet wound, taking him to MetroSouth Medical Center in Blue Island before he was transferred to the trauma center at Christ.
"The last thing I heard him saying in the car was that he couldn't breathe," Dillon-Donald said.
On Thursday, a 7-year-old boy was also taken to Christ after being shot twice in his head while at an Independence Day barbecue in a Chatham park.
Jaden, who his mother described as "very intelligent," is on a breathing machine and faces multiple surgeries, according to his mother.
A 34-year-old man who was in the group with Jaden took a bullet in his right wrist, and a 28-year-old man was shot in his chin. Both were taken to MetroSouth Medical Center in Blue Island, with the 28-year-old man later taken to Christ.
Dillon-Donald said one of the men was a friend's fiance, while another was just another man in the park.
