BRIDGEPORT — After a shooting splattered blood on the garbage cans behind his apartment, Raul Cruz might pack up his family and move to safer part of the city.
“It’s the second time this has happened,” the 45-year-old said of a shooting near the 1100 block of West 32nd Place that sent a 17-year-old to the hospital Thursday night. “I’ve got kids.”
The shooting happened around 8 p.m., when the teen got into a fight and was shot in his shoulder, said Officer Jose Estrada, a Chicago Police spokesman.
From inside his apartment, Cruz recalled hearing at least eight shots echo through the neighborhood.
The teen landed in the emergency room at Stroger Hospital, where he was later listed in "stable" condition, though police could not say if his injuries were life-threatening. No one is in custody, and police say the shooting may have been gang-related.
Though worried, Cruz wasn't too surprised by the incident. Shootings do happen in the neighborhood from time to time — you’ll hear about the area in the news or at monthly CAPS meetings. A few blocks away in June, near a street corner in the 900 block of West 32nd Place, 17-year-old Jeremy Salinas was fatally shot in his chest.
“I tell my employees, don’t ever walk down that street,” said Art Jackson, owner of Pleasant House Bakery. “It’s really really shady.”
Jackson has heard too many stories of beatings and bloodshed unfolding on 32nd Place.
He’s witnessed just as many others outside his shop — a place once called “Carlito’s Way,” a reference to the 1993 gangster film about a former convict trying to stay away from drugs and violence despite the pressures in his neighborhood.
“This place was literally — and figuratively — a homage to that movie,” said Jackson, who has been in Bridgeport for about five years. “There was a lot of gang activity in the area, and we were a little taken aback by that.”
The slice of Morgan Street between 31st and 35th streets and the pockets of neighborhood to the east and west have been known as the territory of the Latin Kings.
“The Kings are on Morgan Street,” Chicago Police Sgt. Martin Loughney said, but he did not know if the most recent shooting was gang-related.
Another street gang, Satan’s Disciples, roams the neighborhood's darkest spots selling dope.
Long-time neighbors say there aren’t as many shootings — or gangbangers — as there were in the 1990s, but there’s still bad blood brewing on certain blocks.
“They started to fade away,” Jackson said, “but there’s always been that knowledge that just a few blocks down the street, they’re still hanging out.”
Neighbors near the Thursday shooting said they heard the shots and saw the police cars come and go, stringing up crime scene tape and cutting it down.
Putting her granddaughter in a stroller, one woman said of the gunshots: “I’d rather not hear it.”
Before Cruz moved to Bridgeport, he grew up in Pilsen, where he dabbled in gangs when he was a kid. Now he said he keeps to himself and doesn't "socialize."
“I’ve been there,” said Cruz, who felt strange watching the Fire Department wash blood from the concrete behind his home. “I feel sorry for that kid.”
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