Milwaukee Avenue, always a busy strip, was packed with cars and people, and the noise was getting more crowded by the hour.
Finally, before 3 a.m. on October 10, The Point employees called the police and asked squad cars to clear the block in front of the Wicker Park Club.
When no official responded, the staff called again at 3:34 am, according to phone records provided by the club. After that he closed the bar.
“We called, and no one showed up,” owner Jun Lin told the Sun-Times.
Shooting started after about 10 minutes.
Four gunmen opened fire when people ran through traffic, ran behind cars or were lame in the street. One person died in this, while four others were injured.
According to a Sun-Times analysis, it was another mass shooting in a year that had already far surpassed each of the previous five years. And this one Lynn and others believe could have been prevented if the police had stuck to the plan to work with the neighborhood.
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Following complaints from residents and business owners over the summer, the city imposed an overnight parking ban on weekend nights to discourage unruly crowds.
Lin said it is an effective plan, but it is not always carried out.
“Some weekends were happening, some weekends they weren’t,” Lin said. “We were told it was because resources were being stretched too low, but that doesn’t change the fact that someone died.”
In those hours of that Sunday morning, surveillance video showed Milwaukee Avenue full of parked and idle cars.
According to Eld, the officers who were handing out tickets and helping to clear those cars were pulled over for another job. Daniele La Spata (1st).
La Spata acknowledged the need for greater coordination between the police, the Department of Roads and Sanitation, and the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection “to really ensure that it … is a vibrant community with a vibrant nightlife that is safe and sound. is also .”
Police officials had no comment.
‘Battle Field’
Fernandos Johnson Jr., The Point, 1565 n. We were walking off Milwaukee Avenue when the shooting began.
He had finished playing a show in a nearby subterranean and went to the bar late at night as he had done several times before. After the lights came on and staff began escorting people out the door, Johnson stayed behind, talking with a friend until security told him he had to leave.
It was near the front door that he heard someone firing four or five shots.
“I ducked behind the wall,” Johnson said. “You hear people running around the club, screaming… It was a wild couple of minutes.”
Surveillance video shows a guard leading people back inside the building, where they ducked down and hid or exited from behind. A staff member is seen helping an injured woman inside, while another works to put a tourniquet on her leg.
“It was a war zone,” Lin said. “Everybody was shooting everybody.”
About three minutes after the first shots, surveillance footage from the bar shows police vehicles coming in.
Lin said the Chicago Police Department later issued a statement saying that the shooting took place after “a brawl inside the bar”, but Lin said that the police may only be referring to a “fight” minutes before the bar was closed. .
The footage shows two men approaching each other as a woman steps in between. The rush begins to build but ends after about 30 seconds. A security guard arrives, and later the two men are seen hugging and smiling.
Lin said that his bar had already decided to close due to the large crowd outside the exchange. A few minutes later, the venue lights up, and patrons begin to walk out.
The club’s security cameras show a man in a ski mask standing near a car outside and wielding a gun, apparently shooting someone across the street. Police say a total of four people were involved in the shooting.
kept guns
According to police, for the first time Raymond R. Jones opened fire on a group of people outside the club. Someone in the group shot back, striking 32-year-old Jones in the chest as he fell between two parked cars.
Police say that twenty seconds after the first round of shots, teeny Sykes broke into the car of his girlfriend, a security guard, and took his handgun from the glovebox. Sykes was captured by The Point shooting surveillance video into the crowd. Someone in the crowd fired again, prosecutors have said.
A woman running nearby was shot in the shoulder as she ran for cover. Prosecutors said one of the two people who got out of the car when the shooting began suffered a leg injury. Two others were injured before the shooting ended before police arrived.
Lynn said his security chief performed CPR on Jones, but he died. The other four survived. So far this year in Chicago, nearly 300 people have been injured in shootings involving several victims; This is higher than last year and more than double the toll of 2019.
Lin said his staff scans ID cards, pats male patrons and uses metal-detector wands to examine women. But allowing cars to be parked on the street makes it easier for people to find concealed guns.
“As a Business Owner, What Else Can I Do?” Lin asked. “Apart from fold up and go. But I have 40 employees that I’m responsible for… I have my lifetime savings in these businesses.”
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Lin believes the solution is very simple: tow cars and station squad cars at the ends of blocks during overnight hours during weekends.
The weekend after the shooting, police and city agencies showed up in the 1500-block of North Milwaukee Avenue to enforce parking restrictions and shut down an “illegal party,” according to La Spata.
Lin was pleased with the police presence but expected the police to be more consistent with their enforcement.
“We have had two meetings with the police so far. “We have been told that at least they will take the ticket and take the cars off the road.”
The video in the player above is from a previous report.
(Source: Sun Times Media Wire – Copyright Chicago Sun-Times 2021.)
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