May 24--Jeniece Smiley picked up her phone as she sat in a white sedan in Englewood late Monday night. And her father thinks that may have saved her life.
As she talked, someone on the street at 71st Street and Wentworth Avenue opened fire, hitting her in the head, the shoulder and the hand. One of the bullets struck her phone.
"It hit the phone, that's what saved her," said Smiley's father, John. "I'm OK now. She's going to be all right."
Smiley, 24, was among eight people shot in Chicago from Monday afternoon through early Tuesday. She was on her way to pick up a friend around 11:15 p.m. when she heard gunfire, her father said.
"She said she didn't realize, she thought they were shooting at someone else," John Smiley said Tuesday morning.
After she was hit, her car rolled across Wentworth into a vacant lot filled with waist-high weeds. The driver's side window was shattered, and there was a bullet hole an inch long in a passenger door. Police found several spent cartridges in the middle of 71st.
Smiley was taken in serious condition to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.
Police said she has no known gang affiliation, and her father said she does not live near the shooting. "It's a bad neighborhood," he said. "People get shot over there. All crazy, shooting people. They don't have no reason no more."
The overnight gun violence also included four people who were wounded in two shootings about a block from each other and about an hour apart in the South Shore neighborhood, police said.
About 10:10 p.m., a 24-year-old man was shot in the 7000 block of South East End Avenue. He went to Little Company of Mary Hospital with gunshot wounds to the arm and leg. His condition was stabilized.
About 11:30 p.m., three men were shot about a block away in the 1700 block of East 69th Street. They were in a car when someone walked up and opened fire. They drove to 73rd Street and East End Avenue.
A 25-year-old man was shot in the arm, and a 21-year-old man was shot in the leg. Both went to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in good condition. A third man, 32, was grazed in the neck and refused medical treatment.
A police source said the two shootings may be related.
Other shootings:
--At 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, a 31-year-old man was shot in West Pullman. He was in the 11700 block of South LaSalle Street when someone exited an alley and began firing. He was hit in the shoulder and went to Advocate Christ Medical Center in serious condition.
--At 4:25 p.m. Monday, a 16-year-old boy was shot in the East Side neighborhood. The boy was walking in the 9700 block of South Avenue L when a vehicle approached and someone inside fired, said Officer Thomas Sweeney, a police spokesman. The boy was hit in the buttocks and taken to Advocate Trinity Hospital, where his condition was stabilized.
--Just after 4 p.m., a 22-year-old man was wounded in a West Garfield Park shooting. The victim suffered a wound to the leg in the 3900 block of West Lexington Street, near Pulaski Road, and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where his condition was stabilized, police said. Police corrected earlier information that the shooting took place on Pulaski.
