CHICAGO _ Two people, including an elderly man, were shot during a crime spree that started with the carjacking of an on-duty undercover Chicago police officer in the Near North neighborhood Thursday evening.
The rush hour shooting fell in the middle of a series of 14 shootings across the city within 15 hours between Thursday and Friday mornings, including three fatal gun attacks.
The officer will be "fine," and she was not physically harmed, said Chicago Police Deputy Chief Kevin Ryan at a press conference after the attacks.
She was carjacked around 5:30 p.m. in the 600 block of West Chicago Avenue, police said. The assailants fled with her unmarked, leased car.
The incident continued, leaving two people shot after at least one more carjacking and two attempted carjackings. They were taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
The two people shot were men, 37 and 84, according to a law enforcement source.
"The offender took the (officer's) vehicle and shortly thereafter, ended up at Oak and Rush," Ryan said. There, he tried to carjack another victim who he shot in the arm.
"Immediately" after that he was "successful" in carjacking another citizen in the same area and fled in that vehicle, which police officers spotted near the 1400 block of Inner Lake Shore Drive.
The robber had sprinted inside the lobby of a condominium building in that block after trying to carjack another person, leaving a second victim grazed by a bullet, Ryan said.
Officers then "encountered" the robber, armed with a semi-automatic pistol, in the lobby and he was arrested within "minutes," Ryan said.
The suspect has "multiple" previous arrests, Ryan said. He was taken to Area Central detective headquarters and no charges have been filed yet.
"It is safe down here," Ryan stressed. "If you come down here to do this, you're going to get caught."
Dozens of people gathered around the intersection of Rush and Oak streets, some letting out audible gasps when they saw a Nissan with a bullet hole through its driver side window.
Steve Brown, an attorney who lives a block away, was walking home from getting groceries when he saw paramedics helping a man with a gunshot wound to the arm out of the driver's seat of the Nissan. He was placed on a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance, Brown said.
Brown, like others in the city, has heard of shootings taking place on the city's South and West side but thought this was abnormal.
"It's troubling. This is right in the middle of the most affluent part of Chicago. But it's crazy because they know they are going to get caught."
Passersby snapped pictures and live-streamed the scene on social media.
"And this is supposed to be the good side of town," one man said before leaving.
The Near North Side crime spree happened at the same time a 24-year-old man, identified as Lorenzo Reed, was shot in the head and killed in the West Side's West Garfield Park neighborhood, police said.
Reed was on the sidewalk in the 4300 block of West Adams Street around 5:30 p.m. when a dark colored van pulled up to him and someone inside began firing, police said. The 24-year-old was pronounced dead on the scene at 5:57 p.m.
Reed lived in the 300 block of North Avers Avenue.
Shortly before, a 21-year-old man was shot in the head around 5:18 p.m. in the 1500 block of North Washtenaw Avenue in the Humboldt Park neighborhood on the West Side.
The man was taken to Stroger Hospital where he was listed in critical condition and later pronounced dead, police said.
Police previously said it happened in the 2600 block of West LeMoyne Street.
Most recently, a 39-year-old man, identified as Willie J. Clarke, of the 7100 block of South Francisco Avenue, was shot in the abdomen and killed around 2:50 a.m. Friday in a parking lot in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side, police said.
Officers were called to the 600 block of West 63rd street for reports of gunfire and found the man lying on the ground.
He was pronounced dead on scene at 3:02 a.m.
The crime scene stretched across an empty parking lot that is shared by a Walgreens and an Aldi grocery store.
Earlier, a 28-year-old man was seriously injured at 12 a.m. on Thursday when he was shot in the arm and leg while in a parked car in the 2100 block of West 68th Street in the South Side's West Englewood neighborhood.
Police and paramedics carefully helped the man out of a silver sedan that was parked on a dark, residential street.
The man yelled in pain as they placed him on a stretcher and loaded it into the ambulance.
A tearful woman walked away from the ambulance as police unspooled crime scene tape to cordon off the block.
"I don't believe this," she said.
The was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in serious condition.
