Charles Nelson had just gotten out the door on his way to a concert in Millennium Park Monday afternoon when gunfire exploded up his South Side block. The 71-year-old got down to the ground and waited through what he estimated was a full minute of shooting.
“Please call 911,” he texted his neighbors. “Over 30 gunshots.”
When Nelson got up again, almost 40 shell casings lay in the street.
Five people were injured, one seriously, in the Monday afternoon shooting in the Bronzeville neighborhood at the northwest corner of the Dr. Martin Luther King Community Service Center, authorities said.
Police officers responded to a call of a person shot at the 700 block of East 43rd Street just before 3:30 p.m. and found five victims had been struck by gunfire, Chicago police said. A woman in her 60s was shot in the leg and transported to UChicago Medicine in serious condition, according to a preliminary police notification.
Four others were injured in the shooting, including a 35-year-old man who was shot in the arm, a 39-year-old man who was shot in the arm, a 44-year-old man who was shot in the foot and a 72-year-old woman who was shot in the shoulder, police said. The four victims were transported to UChicago Medicine where they were listed in good condition, police said.
By 5 p.m., traffic all around the intersection at East 43rd and South Cottage Grove Avenue had stopped.
As police worked inside the crime scene tape, elderly people stood in groups and wheeled back and forth inside the building’s fenced in yard.
Nelson, wearing a shirt that read “Bronzeville: The Musical,” said he and his neighbors had been complaining to local leaders about shooting and other hazards between Langley and Cottage Grove Avenues for years.
“Just in October, three of our units had bullets come in from another incident,” he said.
The last neighbor had just finished getting her windows replaced this past weekend, he said.
No one was in custody and no other offender information was immediately available as of Monday afternoon as Wentworth area detectives investigated, police said.
The shooting comes after thirteen people were shot, two fatally, on the West Side in what appeared to be separate incidents early Sunday morning. The fatalities included an 18-year-old, identified by the Cook County medical examiner’s office as Kaleb Williams, and a 22-year-old woman whose identity had not been released as of 5:30 p.m. Monday.
The Tribune’s Caroline Kubzansky contributed.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/08/11/chicago-police-shooting-bronzeville/