WICKER PARK — A 24-year-old man visiting family in Wicker Park was shot in his leg overnight after getting into a quarrel with two men on the street, police said.
The man, identified by a family member as Jeremy Mendez, was standing with a friend on the sidewalk in the 1200 block of North Wolcott Avenue about 3:55 a.m. Thursday when they got into an argument with two other men, said Officer Jose Estrada, a Chicago Police Department spokesman.
During the argument, one man pulled a gun and shot Mendez in his upper right leg. The gunman and the man with him ran away, Estrada said.
Though police said Mendez was taken to Stroger Hospital in serious condition, his cousin Jose Alvarez said Mendez was being released Thursday morning.
"He's fine," Alvarez said.
No one was in custody for the shooting, which police believe was gang-related.
The shooting happened just north of a trendy section of Division Street that's packed with bars and in front of a large apartment building.
Neighbor Renee Briglio, 29, was walking her dog past the shooting scene later in the morning and said she was surprised by the violence.
"This area is usually very safe," Briglio said. This "seems like out-of-ordinary recent crime."
At a packed community policing meeting last week, Wicker Park residents complained about recent shootings, including one that killed a man and left another wounded inside Wicker Park on Sept. 6 and another that killed a teen in the 1500 block of North Milwaukee Avenue on Sept 14.
A resident also asked police about shots fired in the 1200 block of Marion Court earlier this month, not far from where Mendez was shot early Thursday.
Mendez, who lives in Humboldt Park, was visiting family in Wicker Park when he was shot, according to his aunt, who declined to be identified.
Two men also were wounded in separate overnight shootings, one that happened in Pilsen and another in which a man walked into a Lincoln Park Walgreens with gunshot wounds.
