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7-year-old boy shot on the Near West Side

Theo

A 7-year-old boy was shot and killed on the Near West Side Tuesday afternoon.

Officers arrived at the 2300 block of West Jackson Boulevard around 3 p.m., where they found the boy with a gunshot wound to the chest. They applied pressure to his wound, Chicago Police Chief Larry Snelling told reporters, and an officer took him to Stroger Hospital in his patrol car.

“I have the child in my car, we are going to Stroger,” the officer told the dispatchers over the radio. “Tell them it’s getting critical.”

The boy was pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital, Snelling said at a press conference outside the hospital.

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Police say the shooting of a seven-year-old boy in West Town on Tuesday did not appear to be targeted.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

The shooting did not appear to be targeted, he added. The boy was leaving his house to go to a neighbor’s house when he reached the sidewalk and shots rang out.

“The random shooting of this seven-year-old is unacceptable. We really need to think about who we are as a society when our children are being shot in the streets,” Snelling said.

Sources told the Sun-Times that an assault rifle may have been used in the attack. At least 11 shell casings were found at the scene, an official said via radio.

“We’ve had enough of this,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said at the press conference. “We’ve had enough of this. We’re not pointing fingers at anyone, we all have to get to work and decide what kind of city we ultimately want to be: A city where kids can get up and walk, ride bikes and play, or a city that has allowed guns to come into town to terrorize us.”

No one reported that he was in custody.

This is an evolving story.

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