HYDE PARK — A man who witnessed the aftermath of a fatal shooting on the Hyde Park lakefront said the victims were rapping inside a pavilion when a gunman approached and opened fire.
Authorities said two men were shot around 7:15 p.m. Sunday, although witnesses said they saw a third potential victim running from the scene with bloody clothes.
The dead man was was identified as Ovadiyah Chandler, 34. He was in a wheelchair when the gunman approached and shot him in his head, apparently at close range in the park pavilion at 5600 S. Everett Drive.
“You could tell by the gunshots it was deliberate, very precise,” said the witness, an employee at a neighboring building who did not want to be named out of fear of retribution.
The wounded man told witnessses he was Chandler's brother.
The employee said he was outside at 6:45 p.m. and saw the three men rapping in the pavilion. He heard about eight gunshots at 7:15 p.m.
“It sounded like a quarter stick of dynamite,” the employee said.
He said he saw Chandler laying on the floor of the pavilion next to his wheelchair, a second man in a bloody hooded sweatshirt run across 56th Street yelling that his brother was shot and a third man with blood on his clothes run toward the lakefront through the underpass at 57th Street.
Other residents on 56th Street said they also saw the third man run toward the lakefront while the shooter, wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, ran toward a running dark blue sedan, which was then driven west down 56th Street.
Police confirmed two people were shot at the pavilion, but said there were no reports of the third victim neighbors claim to have seen.
The employee said he stayed with the man who was shot in the arm until a police officer on a bicycle arrived five minutes later.
“He was somewhere between distressed and panicked,” he said. “He wasn’t scared, it seemed like his brother was a target.”
Ald. Leslie Hairston has scheduled a 6:30 p.m. meeting Monday at Montgomery Place, 5550 S. South Shore Drive, to update residents on responses to the incident.
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