CHICAGO _ The paramedic cleared a path through the crowd for a woman with a large bandage on her right thigh, one of three people shot during an argument on the street in Lawndale Monday afternoon.
"And so it begins," he said, referring to shootings that usually rise with the temperature in Chicago. It had hit 80 for the first time since early October.
Through the summer-like afternoon and night, at least one person was killed and eight people were wounded by gunfire in the city, slightly higher than what it has been like on weekdays, according to data kept by the Tribune.
At least 730 people have been shot in the city this year, well below the 1,000-plus at this time the last two years when Chicago saw record levels of violence. But the shootings this year are still substantially higher than other recent years, according to the Tribune data. There have been at least 152 homicides this year.
The Lawndale attack occurred around 4:55 p.m. in the 3100 block of West Lexington Street when two men and a women got into an argument with someone who pulled a gun and started firing, police said.
A woman, 25, was hit in the right leg, a 23-year-old man was also shot in the leg and a 20-year-old man was hit in the arm, police said. They were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital and their conditions stabilized.
At the scene, people gathered on porches and paced the sidewalks on the street of mostly two- and three-flats. Several said they had just gotten home from work to find their block closed off with yellow tape. At least two ambulances flanked a firetruck police cars on the one-way street.
At the west end, near Kedzie Avenue, paramedics lifted the woman from a wheelchair onto a stretcher, then raised her into an ambulance.
"Oh shhhhhh," the woman said, not finishing the word.
About three hours earlier, a man was shot to death in his car near Fosco Park in University Village, police said. Clarence Dabney, 29, was shot in the left side as he sat in his car in the 1300 block of West 13th Street about 1:50 p.m., according to police. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Dabney lived about six miles away in the 5400 block of West Monroe Street, according to the medical examiner. Investigators were not immediately able to find anyone who said they witnessed the shooting, police said.
