ARMOUR SQUARE — Mike Alhammouri has had enough.
After a shooting left a man with a graze wound in his back outside Ferro's Beef at 31st Street and Wentworth Thursday, the 35-year-old owner of Loco Savings Food Mart is thinking about selling his shop and moving out of the neighborhood.
“I feel not safe,” said Alhammouri, who moved to the United States from Palestine a decade ago. “It makes me sick.”
The shooting happened about 5 p.m. Thursday as a 20-year-old man sat in the back of a car. Someone in a tan-colored van pulled up and shot at him, police said.
The victim is a documented gang member, police said. No one is in custody for the shooting.
At his desk in nearby Century Furniture, Mike Li said he heard “pops.”
“I was hoping it wasn’t gunshots,” Li said.
Then the police cars showed up.
In the 14 years he has run the furniture store next door to Ferro’s Beef, Li said he has never heard gunfire in the neighborhood.
“This is a busy part of the neighborhood,” Li said. “It’s awkward that that would happen here.”
Alhammouri wasn’t surprised by news of the shooting.
He’s been robbed at gunpoint by a masked man. Robbers have also targeted the Shell Gas Station across the street.
Alhammouri said the area near 31st Street and Wentworth Avenue is convenient for shooters and robbers because the nearby highway makes it easy to flee.
“It’s horrendous,” said Ald. Patrick D. Thompson (11th). “The gun violence is out of control all over the city. We’ve gotta do something to curb that."
A man who lives near Ferro’s and who would not share his name said the violence that unfolded near his home is common in South Side neighborhoods:
“The city of Chicago has changed," he said.
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