1 Dead, 5 Hurt In Pair Of South Side Shootings
(STMW) -- A pair of South Side shootings less than 10 minutes apart Saturday night left a downstate Springfield man dead and five other people wounded.
The first shooting happened about 6:07 p.m., when two 19-year-old men were shot in the 1100 block of West 51st Street in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, police said.
One man was shot in the hand, leg, side and buttocks, police said, and the other was shot in the back. Both were taken in critical condition to John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, according to Fire Media Affairs.
A few minutes later, about 6:21 p.m., four people were shot — one fatally — in the 4200 block of South Wells Street, authorities said.
William Lee Martin, 30, of the 1700 block of East Lawrence Avenue in Springfield, was dead at the scene, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's office.
A 38-year-old man was shot in the neck and listed in critical condition at Stroger, police said. A 32-year-old man was shot in the stomach and in "stable" condition at Stroger, and a 27-year-old man was shot in the leg and in "stable" condition at Mercy Hospital.
Alease Davies said her son Lavelle Davies was one of the people shot on 51st Street, just blocks from where his brother Rashaun Stephanys was fatally shot in June. He was on his way to a corner store when a person in a car drove by and fired shots hitting Lavelle, 19, Davies said.
"I said, 'Oh my God, not again. It's only been five months," said Davies, who now lives in Calumet City. "Am I cursed, or what?"
Her youngest son was in his old neighborhood visiting family and friends, she said.
"He called me himself and said 'Ma, I got shot,' " Davies said. "I said, 'You're playing me. Don't play no joke on me."
Lavelle, who is known as "Vell," had recently been released from Cook County Jail. Davies said he'd been on probation when police found two bullets in his room and that's why he'd been incarcerated.
"He hadn't even been out 48 hours and now he's shot," Davies said.
She said Lavelle is recovering at Stroger Hospital after suffering one shot in the back.
"He's good. He just called me," she said. "He was shot one time but with this particular gun, the bullet spreads out into multiple little pieces."
Stephanys, 22, was killed June 8 after he was shot just feet from his home at 51st and May streets, authorities said. He, his cousin and three others were outside watching a YouTube video when two men approached and fired shots, police said at the time. One of Davies' daughters was to graduate from Richards Career Academy that day.
Since the shooting, Davies has moved to Calumet City.
"I can't even go to Stroger Hospital because that's where Rashaun died," she said.
In the shootings on South Wells, shooters emerged from a vacant lot and started firing at men on a porch. Two men were wounded but the bullets also went through the window of a building, striking two men who were sitting on a couch, killing one of them, neighbors said.
"They started shooting randomly from across the street," said Marcus Keene, who was visiting family next door.
Keene said his family knew the two men shot on the porch and that one of them had been shot in the chest, the other in the leg. He said they were longtime neighborhood residents in their late 20s.
"They didn't gang-bang or nothing like that," Keene said. "There wasn't any rivalry going on."
(Source: Sun-Times Media Wire © Chicago Sun-Times 2012. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
