Police: 4 people wounded, 2 killed in East Garfield Park shooting

CHICAGO (SUN TIMES MEDIA WIRE) - Two men were killed and four were wounded in a shooting Sunday afternoon in the East Garfield Park neighborhood on the West Side, according to Chicago Police.

At 4:33 p.m., they were standing in a group in the 3500 block of West Van Buren when a white, four-door sedan pulled up and multiple people got out and started shooting, according to Chicago Police. The vehicle might have been a Chevrolet Impala, police said.

Two of the men, ages 27 and 23, were shot in the chest and taken to Stroger Hospital, where they were pronounced dead just after 5 p.m., according to police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office. Autopsies on Monday found one of them died of a gunshot wound to the back and the other died of multiple gunshot wounds. Their deaths were ruled homicides.

An 18-year-old man was shot in the chest; a 23-year-old man was shot in the back; and a 24-year-old man was shot in the chest, back and leg, police said. They were all taken in critical condition to Stroger Hospital.

The sixth man, 26, suffered a gunshot wound in his right leg and was taken in good condition to Mount Sinai Hospital, police said.

Residents say the block, just off the Eisenhower Expressway, has become a hotspot for drug trafficking. Dealers have had success hiding their drugs in the area whenever cops are called, the residents said.

A group of about 30 people was seen on the block in the hours before the shooting, with some running up and down the street. The residents said it looked like an argument had broken out.

The shooting happened in the Chicago Police Department’s Beat No. 1133, the most violent beat in the city last year.

In 2016, the police beat saw 61 shootings, 16 of which were fatal, according to Chicago Sun-Times records. Three police officers were shot and three people were shot by police last year in the beat.

Violence in Beat No. 1133 had fallen dramatically during the first three months of 2017 with only two nonfatal shootings and not a single homicide, according to Sun-Times records. Those numbers have now more than doubled.