Woman Dead After SUV Is Hit By A Car From Which Someone Was Firing A Gun In North Center
By Marissa Parra and Mary Chappell
CHICAGO (CBS) — A woman is dead after a crash early Sunday morning that police said started with someone firing from a car barreling down busy Irving Park Road in the North Center neighborhood.
As CBS 2's Marissa Parra reported, initial reports indicated someone in a Toyota Camry and someone in a black sedan were each firing at each other as they headed west on Irving Park Road from Lincoln and Damen avenues to Western Avenue.
A subsequent update did not mention the shootout, nor the black sedan. But police do believe the Toyota went on to hit a Nissan Rogue sport-utility vehicle full of innocent bystanders, killing one of them.
At 3:03 a.m., a Chicago Police K9 Unit officer was stopped at a red light on Irving Park Road and reported hearing gunshots and seeing muzzle flashes from the Toyota Camry.
The officer then turned on their emergency lights and fired the car, until the Camry blew past the red light at Irving Park Road and Western Avenue and into that black Nissan Rogue.
Video documented the impact, which was so severe that it ripped apart the back end of the car and ejected a passenger.
Meanwhile, the Toyota – which was seen on camera skidding down Irving Park Road – ended up stopping. Its occupants bailed on foot and ran off in an unknown direction.
More officers arrived on the scene within 15 seconds of the impact.
A 37-year-old woman was ejected from the Nissan Rogue and did not survive. She was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.
The driver of the Rogue, a 27-year-old man, was also taken to Illinois Masonic for observation but did not suffer any serious injuries.
Police said they found a weapon in the Toyota Camry. Late Sunday, they were combing through surveillance videos trying to figure out how many people they were seeking and looking for possible descriptions.
This is the third incident within the past week in Chicago in which someone was seen firing from a moving car in a busy district.
On Saturday, a man was shot and wounded during a pursuit through the Cabrini-Green neighborhood on Saturday afternoon, and a woman who happened to be driving nearby was also shot. Police said at 1:45 p.m. that day, a 32-year-old man was driving a white Buick sedan near Clybourn Avenue and Division Street with a 1-year-old boy in the car. A maroon sedan was following the Buick, police said.
Someone in the maroon sedan began firing at the Buick, striking the man multiple times with gunfire causing him to crash his vehicle near Larrabee Street - blowing out the back window.
This past Wednesday, four bystanders and a suspected perpetrator were shot in the Fulton River District as someone fired from a car during a chase. The shots were fired along a long stretch of Milwaukee Avenue, and through the busy intersection with Halsted Street and Grand Avenue.
One of the victims, a man in the back of a Lyft on his way to see his girlfriend, was shot in the back and critically injured. Another victim, T.J. Kory, was on his bicycle when he too was shot.