Community activists made a passionate plea for help Monday after a shooting on Interstate 57 left three people dead — including a 1-year-old girl.
“We’ve got to get these baby killers off the street,” activist Andrew Holmes declared as he announced a $7,000 reward for information that helps police find the person who apparently fired from another vehicle.
And, he said, “if anyone has the color of that vehicle, give the Illinois State Police a call.”
Still, details of the shooting were sparse Monday. A-mara Hall, 1, died hours after it occurred about 10:40 p.m. Sunday in the northbound lanes of I-57 near 111th Street, officials said. Also shot and pronounced dead at the scene were William Smith, 13, and Nasir Hall, 19.
A 14-year-old boy was also shot and taken to Comer’s Children’s Hospital in fair-to-serious condition, Chicago Fire Department officials said. Two other children who were in the vehicle when the shooting occurred were hospitalized, but police didn’t say how they were injured.
“Everyone in that vehicle had some kind of injury, whether critical or minor,” a spokesperson with the Illinois State Police said.
The vehicle had exited the expressway and stopped near the top of the 111th Street off ramp, police said.
The shooting was the 21st on an Illinois expressway this year, according to data on the Illinois State Police website. Three of them have been fatal.
Holmes and other activists spoke to reporters Monday outside the Chicago Police Department headquarters. Holmes said he didn’t know what prompted the Sunday shooting. But he said enough was enough.
He called on anyone with information about the shooting to share it with police, adding, “we’re asking you, citizens of Chicago, take control of these streets back.
“Can you imagine that projectile hitting that baby,” Holmes said, “and the pain that baby went through?”
