One-year-old boy shot in the head in Riverdale

FOX 32 NEWS - A one-year-old boy was shot in Riverdale Thursday in an accident that happened while some children were playing with a gun.

“I heard a pow, so my heart dropped instantly,” said neighbor Michelle Baker.

It was a heartbreaking sound that echoed out of a three flat in the 100 block of East 136th Street in Riverdale around 11:30 A.M.

“I ran downstairs to see what gunshots I heard, then I just see the neighbors running and screaming, saying the baby got shot in the head, the baby got shot,” Baker said.

A neighbor captured cell phone video of the frantic run by paramedics carrying the one-year-old boy to the ambulance, his head bandaged and bleeding.

“I just heard the kids were upstairs playing with the gun and one of them shot the baby, accidently shot the baby in the head,” said neighbor Lorie Baker.

Riverdale police are investigating, trying to determine where the gun came from and who it belonged to. The boy’s mother reportedly told people she had no idea where the gun came from. The children were playing with the weapon in a room on the third floor where the family lived.

Neighbors struggled to understand why a gun would have been left around where children could find it.

“It's pretty sad and it's crazy how they just leave weapons around little kids and they know how kids play with it, they'll pick anything and they don't know what they're doing so I don't know why they have guns around kids in the first place,” Lorie Baker said.

But as they wait for answers, neighbors are hoping for the best. 

“I just feel for the baby, I hope the baby make it and I just pray for the family,” Michelle Baker said.

The boy underwent surgery at Advocate Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, but the hospital did not release information on his condition.