12-year-old boy and 15-year-old girl injured in large crowd: police

A teenage girl and a prepubescent boy were hospitalized Friday night after both were shot during a large gathering in the Douglas neighborhood on the South Side, authorities said.

According to police, a 12-year-old boy was in a crowd in the 500 block of East 31st Street around 9:20 p.m. when someone shot at him from a moving silver car, wounding him in the leg. The 15-year-old girl was sitting in a car when she was shot in the back, police said. Both were in good condition at the University of Chicago Medicine.

At around 9:30 p.m., officers dispersed a large crowd of about 150 young people from a parking lot near South Martin Luther King Drive and 32nd Street. At least seven cars near the parking lot had their windows or windshields smashed.

Police arrested at least two people as they dispersed the gathering, but said no one was in custody in connection with the shootings.

After clearing the parking lot, officers slowly pushed the group in patrol cars and on foot north onto South King Drive, where people dispersed after about an hour.

Officials said detectives were investigating the shootings.