KENWOOD — A 17-year-old boy was killed and a 15-year-old boy wounded in a shooting Monday night about a half mile from President Barack Obama's Kenwood home.
Around 10:40 p.m. Monday, the teens were talking to people in a black van in the 600 block of East 50th Place when someone from the van opened fire, striking both boys, said Officer Hector Alfaro, a police spokesman.
The 17-year-old was shot in his chest and was unresponsive at the scene, Alfaro said.
The teen, Michael Patton of west suburban Glendale Heights, was pronounced dead at the scene at 11:08 p.m., according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office.
The other teen was shot in his right arm and taken to Comers Children's Hospital, where his condition stabilized, Alfaro said.
A resident of the block, who refused to give her name, thought she was dreaming when she heard the seven shots in front of her home. She waited impatiently for what seemed like two minutes for the police to answer the phone.
"I thought it was a bad dream because when I call the police in my dreams they never answer," she said standing in front of her home Tuesday.
After hearing the shots she saw about four people scatter in several different directions from the scene, including two "very athletic" boys who hopped over two fences as they ran away in Monday night's rainstorm and a woman who said she was grazed in the shooting.
One of the boys and the woman, who claimed to be a relative of the slain teen, later returned to the scene, the neighbor said.
"Instead of helping his friend one of the boys was picking up the money from the water," she said adding she didn't believe this was an innocent shooting because "who's going to be standing out there in one of the worst rainstorms at 10 at night?"
As she waited for police, the woman attempted to help the teen, who was lying in a large puddle of water in the middle of the street near a fire hydrant.
"I wasn't really sure if he was still alive so I checked for his pulse," but she was still uncertain as she battled the raging storm and the hysteria of the situation, she said. "I wish I could've moved him out of the water into the grass."
The woman has lived on the block for about nine years. She said this is the first shooting on the block since she's lived there, though violent incidents that have occurred in the alley and on the street corners nearby.
"We were thinking we weren't moving in the next 10 years, but now we're moving sooner," she said lifting her small child back into her home.
No one is in custody for the shooting.
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