As gunfire erupted in a carjacking attempt Wednesday morning in West Garfield Park, Jaquita Sims was sure she was taking her final breath.
My co-worker, whose car they were in, “thought I was dead already, and I thought I was dead already, too,” Sims told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Sims, 40, and her 65-year-old co-worker were their way to work at O’Hare Airport about 4:40 a.m. when Sims spotted an SUV coming toward them in the 100 block of North Kostner Avenue, Chicago police said.
As the SUV sped down the one-way street, she thought it was a police vehicle involved in a chase. The SUV stopped and three masked gunmen jumped out and demanded her co-worker’s car.
“I started screaming my co-worker’s name out,” Sims said.
Police said the gunmen opened fire after Sims’ co-worker shot first and missed.
But Sims says the assailants opened fire as soon as they saw her co-worker’s gun. The co-worker has a concealed carry license and a valid FOID card, police said.
“All I heard was loud noises after that, and my eyes was closed,” Sims said. “I heard [my co-worker] kept screaming my name, but I couldn’t answer him.”
When the shooting stopped, Sims couldn’t move her right arm and could feel blood running down her face, but she kept saying, “I’m alive” and “I’m breathing.”
Sims’ co-worker drove them to West Suburban Hospital in Oak Park, where she learned she had been shot in the chest. Her co-worker was grazed in the right calf.
Doctors told Sims they couldn’t remove the bullet — which is still lodged in Sims’ breast — because doing so would cause more damage to her. Detectives told her the car had 18 bullet holes.
Sims was still in shock. She says she has flashbacks, and her family constantly checks on her to make sure she’s still breathing.
“I don’t bother nobody, I’m a good person, I go to church,” Sims told the Sun-Times. “I go to work, and I make a living for my family, and that’s it.”
Sims burst into tears when she saw her family at the hospital.
“I’m very glad she wasn’t killed,” William Thomas, Sims’ fiancé, said in an interview. “She’s blessed.”
Sims was released from the hospital Wednesday and is being cared for by her family due to the injuries she suffered from her gunshot wound and glass shards from the broken car windows.
“My mom and my sister have to help me in and out [of] the bed, they have to feed me. ... They have to do everything for me because my right arm is not working,” Sims said. “I can’t work, I can’t do nothing. They took a lot from me.”
Sims hasn’t spoken to her co-worker since the shooting but heard from her sister that he was “doing OK and was just shaken up and scared to go to work.”
Sims hopes detectives catch the gunmen who shot her and her co-worker.
“I just pray the police find him, that’s what my prayer is about,” Sims said.
