A group of young boys had just passed Alex, running and skipping on their way to school, when the 16-year-old girl heard two shots down the street.
“The third one hit me like a paintball,” Alex said. “I looked down a little bit but then I just started running.”
The bullet had hit her in the left leg, and Alex finally stopped and leaned against a gate in the West Humboldt neighborhood while someone called for an ambulance. She was released later in the day Thursday with the bullet still lodged in her leg, too close to a bone to be removed for now.
“It is unbelievable and I hate it,” she told WGN-TV, using crutches as she walked near her home. “I’m a little bit happy, I still got my life.”
Police say Alex, who did not want her last name used, was hit by a stray bullet when someone in a car fired at a U-Haul truck around 8:30 a.m. Thursday near the intersection of Kildare Avenue and Hirsch Street.
Alex said she was shot while walking with a friend on her way to Pedro Albizu Campos High School, about 2 miles away from Kildare and Hirsch. She remembers the sidewalk being filled with schoolkids when the gunfire erupted.
“I’ve seen like 10 little boys. They’re running happy to school and everything,” she told WGN-TV. “When I got shot, that’s when I’ve seen the mom. The kids were already past me and the mom was like, ‘Yeah, I just sent my kids that way, are you OK?’ ”
A neighbor who had also just dropped off her children at school said she heard up to six shots near the intersection, then saw the U-Haul truck crash into three or four cars.
“I heard about three shots and then another three,” said the neighbor, who wanted to be identified only by her first name, Patricia. “I thought it might be a school bus that backfired, then I heard a boom and saw this U-Haul truck hit these cars. I called the cops.”
She went over to the truck and heard the driver tell police that someone in a car shot at him. “He said the car had been following him for a few blocks and started shooting at him,” she said. The car then sped off.
“I think it’s time to pack up and leave,” said Patricia, who had just dropped off her children, 16 and 19, at a high school. “It’s not the greatest neighborhood. It’s not Beverly Hills. You have a few gangbangers. … Stuff like this is going to happen.
“It’s unfortunate because it’s the time the kids are going to school.”
A shooting on the same block last November killed a 51-year-old man and seriously wounded two other men. The man who was killed, Felix McGhee Jr., was shot as he sat on his porch on a Friday evening.
Police on Friday reported no one in custody in the girl’s shooting.
