This is so sad. Really, Really Sad.
c-rock

Boy, 13, killed near school in Back of Yards
Friend hurt; cops suspect gang link
By Donna Freedman and Eric Ferkenhoff
Tribune staff reporters


A boy was killed Thursday in an apparent gang-related shooting while walking with a friend on a South Side street two blocks from the boys' school.

The gunfire, which killed Carlos Sanchez, 13, and also slightly injured his friend, broke out moments after the boys spotted two men walking toward them, shouting gang slogans. The boys' school, Agustin Lara Academy in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, had let out for the day less than an hour earlier and they were making their way home.

"They shot me first, then Carlos," the 13-year-old friend said in an interview outside his home Thursday, adding he did not recognize the gunmen. "I was trying to wake (Carlos) up, but I couldn't. He was all sleepy-eyed."

The friend had been treated at Mt. Sinai Hospital, where doctors bandaged a graze wound near his right temple.

"I didn't hear the gun, but I heard the bullet go in my head," he said. "I wanted to tell Carlos to run but it was too late."

Late Thursday, police continued to search for two suspects they described as being in their late teens.

Police said they suspect the shooting, in the 4600 block of South Honore Street, was gang-related. Relatives and friends of the victims, however, insisted the boys were not gang members and police left open the possibility that they were victims of mistaken identity.

The boy's family and friends said the neighborhood has been troubled by gangs and the sound of gunfire has become too frequent.

"I was thinking of moving out of here because of the gangs," said Carlos' mother, Victoria Cruz. A decision was put off until the end of the school year, according to family members, who described Carlos as an eager student who was one of only two boys on the school's cheerleading squad.

"If I went to the store, he would always go with me," his mother said, sobbing amid a group of friends crowded into her living room. "He liked being with his mother and sisters."

Police got the first call about 1 p.m., 45 minutes after school let out for the day at Lara Academy. When officers arrived, they found Carlos, a 7th grader, and his friend, a 6th grader, on the ground.

"It's scary because when you wake up in the morning, you don't know if you'll be dead that night," said Nelly Dominguez, 11, who heard the shots, pulled back her shade and saw the boys on the ground.

Carlos was rushed to Cook County Hospital, where he was pronounced dead of a gunshot wound to the head.

The friend, though wounded, was able to speak with police and told them he and Carlos were walking down the street when they saw two men standing in an alley, police said.

The friend said they heard the men call the name of a gang. The boys looked over and saw the men walking toward them firing, he said.

When the shooting stopped, the men ran.

"I know they're coming back, it makes me a little nervous" the friend said, adding he might move to his native Puerto Rico for a while.

On the sidewalk where the boys fell, people placed votive candles and tried to scrub away the blood stain.

"He was a good kid," said Josue Andrade, 18, a friend of Carlos' family. "Why did they have to go after a little kid?"


Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune

Chicago police seek 2 men in fatal shooting

 
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Published March 29, 2002

Chicago police on Thursday said they were searching for two men who broke into a South Shore apartment and fatally shot a 32-year-old man.

The 46-year-old girlfriend of the victim, Constantine Barrington, said she was sleeping Wednesday in a rear bedroom of the apartment in the 7800 block of South Shore Drive when she awoke to the sound of muffled gunshots, said Sgt. Robert Cargie, a police spokesman.




 






Two men then burst through the bedroom door and demanded to know where a quantity of drug was hidden in the apartment, Cargie said. When the girlfriend couldn't tell them where it was located, the men fled, according to reports.

The woman then went to a front room and found Barrington lying on the floor. He died less than two hours later from a gunshot wound to the chest, the Cook County medical examiner's office said.

I thought Chicago fixed all their violence problems in town by banning guns there? c-rock these stories cant be correct, because they are not allowed to have guns.[;)]

[beer]