The passenger had barely gotten into Lyft driver Robert Smith’s car in Little Italy when there was a screech of tires and Smith looked up to see a gun pointed at the back window.
Smith said he sped down Taylor Street as the gunman kept firing for two blocks. When he had a chance to check, Smith saw his passenger was badly wounded. Smith said he raced to the nearest hospital, where 19-year-old Jeleal Goins died.
“I tried to save him. I didn’t care about traffic lights and speed cameras,” Smith, 52, told the Sun-Times. “I really wanted him to survive. I was praying for him the whole way there. When they took them out of the car, I was praying for the surgeons to do what they could do.”
Police have released few details of the Sunday night shooting, including whether they think Goins was targeted. No one is reported in custody.
Goins’ family works for a violence outreach group. His mother is the executive assistant at Project H.O.O.D. and his brother is its youth manager.
Pastor Corey Brooks, founder of the nonprofit, released a statement Monday saying Goins “tragically fell victim to a senseless act of gun violence, a harsh reality we’ve pledged to combat.”
There have been 11 murders in the Near West police district this year, the same number as this time last year, but shootings are up 6%, according to police data.
Police said a handgun was found in the backseat of Smith’s car but did not say whether it belonged to Goins. Smith said he did not see Goins holding a gun.
Smith said he believed the gunman followed Goins that evening and was waiting for him to get into the car, where he would be trapped.
Goins was standing in a doorway in the 1300 block of West Taylor Street when Smith pulled up just before 9 p.m. Goins got into the car as another car approached and hit the brakes hard.
“I looked to see what was going on,” Smith said. “And before I could even fully look, I saw in my peripheral a person, and I noticed a gun pointing at my rear window, so I just took off.
“They instantly started shooting when I took off,” he said.
Smith later counted at least 12 bullet holes in his car.
A witness told police about seeing someone in a black hoodie firing at Smith’s car, according to a police report. Another witness heard the shots and then saw a male fitting a similar description walking west on Taylor Street.
Smith lives on the West Side, and while he has heard about shootings in his neighborhood, he said he had never seen violence this close up.
“I took him to the emergency room, but when I got to Ashland and I turned and looked again to say something to him, and at that point I knew the outcome ... because his whole body had changed,” Smith said.
Smith had his fiancee on the phone when the shooting began.
“She was in my earbud, so she heard everything,” Smith said.
“I can’t stop playing the other outcomes for me in my head,” he said. “It’s me slumped over the seat with a bullet in my head, or bullets in my body, and my dad’s got to get that phone call, and my kids and their mothers got to get that phone call.
“I just keep playing it in my head,” he added. “Even though God covered me and blessed me … I set up counseling because it’s a lot. This is a lot.”
