A 10-year-old girl was shot and seriously wounded in her home late Thursday night in the Englewood neighborhood.
Her next-door neighbor was up watching TV when bullets also came through her house. She heard the shots and glass shatter. She dropped to the floor and called for her 14-year-old daughter to do the same.
At least three bullets pierced her home, one of them coming within inches of her daughter’s head.
“After, I ran in to see if she was OK. She was very shook. We’re shaken up a lot,” said the woman, who asked to not be identified for her and her family’s safety.
The 10-year-old girl next door was standing in the bedroom of a home in the 6400 block of South Racine Avenue when shots fired from outside hit her in the left thigh at about 11 p.m., according to Chicago police.
She was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital in serious condition, police said. No one is in custody.
“It happens around in Englewood, the violence, but it’s never hit this close. Not on this block. We have never had anything like this happen,” the neighbor said.
She said she heard at least 20 shots that came from the alley behind her home on Thursday night. At least two bullets came through the window in her daughters’ bedroom where the two girls — 14 and 9 years old — sleep in a bunk bed.
The 14-year-old was lying in the top bunk asleep when the shooting happened. The bullets came just above her head and one is still lodged in her dresser. The other bullet came through a basement window.
“Thank God my youngest wasn’t there sleeping on the bottom. I can’t even think about what would have happened. That bullet came right where her head would have been,” the mom said.
Her 9-year-old daughter is best friends with the 10-year-old who was shot. The two go to the same elementary school, take a dance class together and play outside their houses all the time, doing flips and drawing with sidewalk chalk.
“We’re family,” the neighbor said. “She is a good kid, she really is. Her and my daughter, they’re the same.”
Another neighbor down the street who knows the family sees the two young girls play outside every day.
“They’re just cheerful little girls, always out there playing. Just enjoying one another,” he said. He also asked to not be identified.
“We look out for one another here,” he said. “I have been here since 1990 and nothing like this has happened this close.”
He said he was home Thursday night entertaining visitors from out of town. They heard the shots from the alleyway and dropped to the ground.
“This should have never happened, and it definitely shouldn’t have happened to her and that family. They are good people,” he said. “That little girl, she is suffering for a reason she can’t understand.”
The neighbor said her 14-year-old asked if they could move out of their house.
“She doesn’t feel safe here. She wants to move. And I understand that, but where are we going to move?” she said.
“There’s crime everywhere. But I want my kids to feel safe where they’re growing up.”
