17-year-old Richard Edwards was killed and an 18-year-old man was injured in a shooting early Saturday in the South Side Bridgeport neighborhood, police said.
About 2:15 a.m., the two had left a party after they were “involved in an altercation,” police said. As they were driving in a van in the 700 block of West 35th Street, a light-colored SUV pulled up and someone inside opened fire, police said.
The boy was shot in the armpit, police said. Edwards, of the 3900 block of South Lake Park, was pronounced dead at the scene, the Cook County medical examiner’s office said.
The man was shot in the hand and shoulder and taken to Stroger Hospital, where his condition stabilized.
Edward’s body could be seen lying in front of an insurance office on the south sidewalk of 35th Street just east of Halsted for several hours after the shooting. Tenants of the apartment above periodically poked their heads out a window that faced 35th Street.
As police investigated, a woman who said she was the teen’s mother was a half block away on Halsted, crying and pleading with officers to let her see her son’s body, which was covered by a sheet.
“I just want my child,” she said. “I need to touch him. I need to hold him. I need to feel him.”
A man restrained the woman against a car, setting off its alarm twice, and eventually down onto the street as he called other people to tell them to come to 35th and Halsted.
A half block south of the shooting, in the 800 block of West 35th Place, officers blocked off the area surrounding a silver revolver that was in the middle of the street.
In the alley south of 35th Street and just east of Halsted, another officer guarded a van that had its driver’s and driver’s side passenger windows shot out.
Several curious neighbors stood near the crime scene tape as officers directed traffic around street closures of 35th and Halsted streets.
One nearby resident, Daniel Lackemacher, asked officers if traumatic counseling services would be available for those grieving the death. Lackemacher said he has heard gunshots during his four years living in the neighborhood, but never so close to his home.
No one was in custody for the shooting early Saturday. It was the second fatal shooting in Bridgeport in the last three weeks.