Authorities have accused a 17-year-old boy of wounding seven teenagers just outside the Chicago Theatre last November in a mass shooting that renewed citywide discussions about how to best manage “teen takeovers” downtown.
Chicago police arrested the teen, who is not being named because he is being charged as a juvenile, on Wednesday in Hyde Park, according to a news release. The teen faces seven felony counts of attempted murder, seven felony counts of aggravated battery with a firearm, seven felony counts off aggravated discharge of a firearm and single counts of aggravated unlawful possession of a weapon and felony armed robbery, per the release.
Police said some of those charges related to an alleged armed robbery that took place in the Roseland neighborhood about an hour and a half after the Nov. 21 shooting. It wasn’t clear as of Thursday when the teen would appear in court, according to the Cook County chief judge’s office.
That shooting was one of two linked to a social-media-fueled “takeover” that ended in chaos following the city’s Christmas tree lighting. The victims ranged in age from 13 to 18 and came from all over the Chicago area. A second shooting on the 100 block of South Dearborn Street took the life of 14-year-old Armani Floyd and left an 18-year-old wounded on the 100 block of South Dearborn Street. Police have not made an arrest in the second shooting.
Speaking on the morning after the shootings, Mayor Brandon Johnson said police had made 18 arrests and recovered five guns while responding to the shootings. The Chicago Police Department had been aware of the social media postings promoting the gathering for several days and sent hundreds of additional officers to patrol downtown that night, and Johnson said the city had sent out a message via Chicago Public Schools telling students not to participate in the gathering.
“But clearly, what we put in place did not do enough to prevent what we were concerned about from actually manifesting,” he said.
The violence after the Christmas tree lighting reinvigorated a push by downtown aldermen to institute an 8 p.m. downtown curfew for minors, which had been the subject of a rare mayoral veto after Johnson derided the idea as “political theater” that wouldn’t fix the persistent issue of young people gathering in the city’s downtown neighborhoods.
Ahead of the city’s New Years’ Eve celebration, Johnson, Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling and other city leaders pleaded with parents to keep tabs on their children’s whereabouts and warned that anyone under 17 would need to be with an adult after 10 p.m.
CPD instituted 12-hour shifts and canceled days off for New Year’s Eve into New Year’s Day, per communications shared with the Tribune, and announced that its officers, along with outreach workers, would be highly visible around the Loop for the celebration. That celebration unfolded largely without incident.
After the shooting, Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, revived his long-standing City Council efforts to add stronger powers for police to issue teen curfews. Hopkins sought to give the police superintendent the power to declare a teen curfew anywhere in the city with a 12-hour notice, a period substantially longer than the 30 minutes featured in his “snap curfew” legislation that aldermen approved but Johnson vetoed in July.
But Hopkins’ ordinance failed to move forward last month when his own allies rejected a last-minute compromise reached with the Johnson administration. The downtown alderman says he still plans to push for curfew legislation.
And Johnson ally Ald. William Hall, 6th, proposed legislation to fine social media companies if they fail to remove posts flagged by the city as efforts to incite chaotic youth meetups. Aldermen in a key committee similarly did not support Hall’s push, citing legal concerns for the first-of-its-kind proposal.
Tribune reporter Jake Sheridan contributed.
