'Mommy, I'm shot.' 3-year-old boy after being struck by stray bullet during Near West Side attempted robbery
Andrea Boyd was out grocery shopping when she received a call from her teenage twin sons telling her gunfire was erupting mere feet away from where they lived.
"Mom, they shooting over here real bad," Boyd, 37, recalls her sons telling her.
About 4:50 p.m. Saturday, six gunmen approached a 20-year-old man in a parking lot in the 1000 block of West 14th Street, demanded his property then fired shots into the air, according to police reports obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
A 3-year-old boy was inside an apartment nearby lying in bed with his mother and siblings when they heard the gunfire and scrambled for the bedroom door, the police reports stated.
As the boy left the bed, a bullet shattered the window and shot him in the left ear, authorities said. His mother was injured by shattered glass.
"Mommy, I'm shot," the boy told his mother while pointing to his ear, according to the reports.
Boyd arrived home to several squad cars in the parking lot near her apartment. Her children told her they heard "about 40 shots and someone screaming for help."
The boy was taken to Stroger Hospital in fair condition.
The robbery victim was visiting a friend at the Barbara Jean Wright Court apartment complex when he was "ambushed" by the gunmen, one of them someone he knew from high school, the police report states.
The gunmen placed their weapons in a black Nissan that fled in an unknown direction, officials said. Two silver SUVs fled eastbound from the parking lot of the complex.
Two days after the shooting, a bullet hole can be seen in the window of the apartment where the boy was shot. At a parking lot across from the complex, three bullet holes were seen on the side and window of a white Ford Expedition. Police say several other vehicles were also struck by gunfire.
Boyd has lived at the complex for a few months, but the constant violence — most recently the shooting of the boy — has her looking to move to the suburbs for the safety of her and her children.
"I feel terrible, terrified for the kids," said Boyd, who has a 4-year-old son who was also at home at the time of the shooting. "You can't go to work, you can't let your kids go to school by themselves. Everyone has to drop [everything] just to make your kids get back and forth."
A couple of months ago, Boyd's white Mercedes Benz was struck my gunfire in a separate shooting. In August, she rushed to snatch her young son from a nearby park at the complex when shots were fired again.
"It's really ridiculous," Boyd said. "It's very scary."