Aside of covering daily assignments, myself and two fellow photographers, E. Jason Wambsgans and John J. Kim, are also assigned to the overnight breaking news shift.
This means the three of us rotate working two weeks on a normal day shift, then working a week of overnights. The overnight shift starts around 10 p.m. and goes until sometime in the morning, mostly documenting gun violence in the city.
There’s not much I can say about covering the overnight that breaking news reporter Peter Nickeas didn’t already say more eloquently in his piece that ran after the Fourth of July weekend. If you haven’t had a chance to read it, it can be found HERE.
On a recent night out, Nickeas and I were chatting with a man who was watching from across the street as police worked the scene of a shooting. At one point Nickeas asked the man if he was or had ever been in a gang.
“No,” he answered. “But I have been shot. The bullet’s still in me.”
Then he lifted up his arm for us to see the raised bump on his wrist created by the bullet lodged underneath. He explained that doctors said they couldn’t remove it because there are too many veins in the area. I instinctually grabbed my own wrist, which had began to ache at the sight.
“When it gets cold, it itches, bad,” he added.
I cringed. All over Chicago are daily reminders of the ongoing gun violence in the city. Memorials exist nearly everywhere. Some people have emotional scars from loved ones lost. Others have physical scars from experencing violence first hand. But there was something so immediate and powerful about seeing the bullet still there.
I still grab my wrist when look at this photo.
