Woman, 79, hit by stray bullet after early trip to market

Aug. 06--Thelma Burrows, 79, was determined to be the first in line to pick out her favorite vegetables at the farmers market in the Roseland neighborhood, about seven miles from her home.

So she grabbed a bus at daybreak Wednesday and was on her way back home by 9 a.m., waiting to transfer buses at 63rd Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, when she felt pain in her side.

"Did somebody throw a brick at me?'' Burrows wondered, according to her daughter, Melody Burrows-Ball, 46.

It was a shot but she didn't hear the gun because a Green Line train was rumbling overhead. Then she saw everyone "scattering around, like running'' and heard people screaming, "They're shooting, they're shooting'' as she leaned against a liquor and beauty supply store, Burrows-Ball said.

A man driving a black car stopped and asked her if she was OK. "I think I've just been shot,'' she told the man, according to her daughter.

Burrows lifted her shirt and saw that she was bleeding. The man ran back to his car, grabbed a towel and applied pressure to her wound and called 911, Burrows-Ball said.

Ambulances took her and an 18-year-old man who'd been standing near her to hospitals to be treated for gunshot wounds. Doctors told them a single bullet went through his elbow and hit Burrows in the side.

Burrows did not require surgery and, after CAT scans and an overnight stay at Stroger Hospital, she was released Thursday afternoon, according to her daughter.

Police say Burrows and the man do not know each other but their paths crossed as they walked towards each other on 63rd Street. She was walking east, and he was westbound when gunfire rang out, hitting Burrows in the left side of her lower back, and the man, of the Jeffrey Manor neighborhood, in the left elbow, police said.

The 18-year-old told police he "heard a loud noise and discovered he received a gunshot wound'' but didn't see the shooter, according to a police report.

A witness told police that two people had been chasing the 18-year-old, who ducked into a currency exchange for help. "I think I am shot,'' he told a worker there, according to the report. The man left the University of Chicago Hospitals before police got there to interview him.

Burrows is thankful for the Good Samaritan who stopped to tend to her -- and for the neighbor who rushed up and offered to take her groceries home.

"She was very grateful," the daughter said.