Ike Trenell had a bad feeling about the two guys who walked into his East Garfield Park barbershop and glanced toward the back with hard looks on their faces before walking out.
His gut told him to lock the door. As he walked to turn the deadbolt, a spray of bullets came through the shop’s glass windows.
It was Thursday, shortly after 6 p.m. and about 30 people had gathered in the Gotcha Faded barbershop, 234 N. Pulaski Rd., including quite a few children — a toddler among them, Trenell said.
An 11-year-old boy was hit in the back, abdomen and left arm, and his brother, 12, was struck in the knee. Another boy, 16, was shot in the hip.
One of the most disturbing parts of the whole day, Trenell said, occurred while he reviewed security camera footage of the shooters.
“They had nerve enough to be shooting and laughing...that’s just crazy,” Trenell said Friday.
“I am very, very, very upset due to the fact that one got shot once and one got shot three times,” Cierra Mobley said Thursday evening outside of Stroger Hospital, where her sons were being treated. The younger brother underwent a second surgery Friday morning, relatives said.
“It went well, the bullets went through his body, but he’s in pain, and when he cries his mom cries, too,” said Chris Williams, the boys’ uncle.
The adolescent brothers were getting their hair cut at the shop for the first time, Mobley said. Their father’s classmate works at the shop, she said, and they wanted to support the business.
Two men, 30 and 40 years old, were also struck, police said. The older man was hit in the thigh and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, and the younger man took himself to Loretto Hospital with a gunshot wound to the arm. Their conditions were stabilized.
“Something like this never happened. This is a family shop, everyone in the neighborhood knows,” Trenell said.
“But you never know who you’re letting in your doors . . . sometimes their troubles follow them,” he said, adding that he was confident the shooters were targeting someone, possibly a man in the back who’d been shot a few months earlier.
Denah Evans, a stylist who works at the shop, left work to go to the gym just 20 minutes before the shooting.
On Friday, Evans, with a heavy heart, returned to the shop to keep a few hair appointments, despite boarded up windows, bullet holes in barber chairs and two shattered vanity mirrors.
The apron Evans wore Friday was on one of the chairs that was struck, leaving a bullet hole directly in the center of it.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19609423/0_1.jpg)
“This generation is, excuse my language, just f----- up,” Evans said.
The shooting occurred in the 28th ward of Ald. Jason Ervin.
“It was a foolish and cowardice act that’s outside the norm of the street,” he said.
“This is a respectable business. I know the owner and I’ve even had my haircut there before. It’s not a place that there’s been problems,” Ervin said.
On Friday police were reviewing surveillance footage from the area and had solid leads, but no arrests had been made, a Chicago police spokesman.
