Fifteen people were injured in a shooting at a Chicago funeral home on Tuesday, police said. The police interviewed a person of interest, but according to the police there are several suspects.
Six victims were in serious condition at area hospitals and the rest were hospitalized in good condition, police said. One was treated on the scene. Their age ranged from 21 to 65 years old.
Chicago Police First Deputy Superintendent Eric Carter said a black vehicle approached a funeral home in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood, where a memorial service was being conducted when people in the vehicle began shooting.
Funeral attendees returned fire and the vehicle drove away as its occupants continued to fire. The vehicle crashed in the middle of the block and the occupants left and fled in multiple directions, Carter said.
At least 60 caps were recovered from the scene.
The fire department told CBS Chicago that at least nine of the victims were in serious or critical condition. All victims are adults, Carter said. It was unclear how many were from the funeral and how many were in the vehicle.
At least one was apparently an innocent bystander. Family members at a hospital told CBS Chicago that she lives next door to the funeral home and was out for a cigarette and was caught in the shooting. She was fighting for her life Tuesday night, family members said.
At the funeral home, a woman with blood on her jeans told CBS Chicago that she didn’t know whose blood it was.
Sources told CBS Chicago that the shooting was a planned ambush outside the funeral home. The funeral was for Donnie Weathersby, who was shot dead on July 14, reports Charlie De Mar of CBS Chicago.
Sources told CBS Chicago’s Brad Edwards that police were warned that there could be a retaliatory attack on the funeral service. Carter said a patrol car had been assigned to the funeral because of its size.
The shooting came immediately after President Trump offered 175 federal agents to come to Chicago to help deal with the city’s ongoing gun violence. Sources told CBS Chicago that those agents had already arrived in Chicago on Tuesday night.
Some law enforcement officers in military uniform were seen at the scene of the shooting, but it was not known whether they were federal agents.
In a series of tweets, Mayor Lori Lightfoot called the shooting “horrible” and the shooters “cowardly.” He urged anyone with information to come forward, saying, “We cannot shelter the killers. People know who is responsible.”
“When a person takes a gun, we suffer as a city. This cannot be what we are,” Lightfoot said.
Brian Dakss contributed to this article.
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