CHICAGO _ The wounded kept coming in. Every few minutes, it seemed, paramedics would bring in another person who was shot. Detectives followed, hustling in and out of Stroger Hospital.
Lachaka Hobson waited hours for one of them to stop and talk about her 26-year-old daughter, Chamira Williams, who was shot on the West Side while in a car with her boyfriend. But no one stopped.
"My baby's here too," Hobson remembers thinking. "Why hasn't anybody come here to even say anything?"
It turns out no one from the hospital staff apparently called police after Williams was brought there by friends. Hospital policy requires staff to report so-called "walk-in" gunshot victims to Chicago police, but the department said it has no record of being notified about Williams until Aug. 21.
The hospital would not discuss the unusual lapse, citing laws that require Williams to sign a consent form in front of hospital officials. Williams was shot on Aug. 5 during the most violent weekend in the city in years when 75 people were shot and 13 of them were killed. Stroger bore the brunt of it.
Hobson said she contacted police herself several times in the days ahead, but detectives did not arrive at the hospital until more than two weeks after her daughter was shot.
By that time, evidence was long gone. The car was broken into while it sat parked in Chicago. A window shattered in the shooting had been replaced. The recollections of the other people in the car were no longer fresh. No one is in custody.
The Chicago Tribune is examining that first weekend of August, hoping to shed light on the challenges authorities face in solving crime, as well as the impact unsolved shootings may have on the city's ongoing cycle of violence. The Police Department's record for solving shootings that are not fatal is dismal: 6.5 percent so far in 2018 and 7.2 percent for all of 2017.
In Williams' shooting, the department refused to make detectives on the case or their commander available to discuss their progress. A police spokesman said the delay did not have a significant impact and investigators have "gathered crucial details."
Several experts said such a delay in starting an investigation puts detectives at an immediate disadvantage.
"The more time that passes, the trail cools off substantially," said Hector Rodriguez, a retired Chicago police commander who once headed a detective division on the West Side.
