ATF agent shot, critically injured in Back of the Yards
May 4, 2018 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
A federal agent was shot and critically injured early Friday while working undercover in a joint mission with Chicago police officers on the South Side, Chicago police said.
The agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was shot around 3:15 a.m. in the 4400 block of South Hermitage Avenue in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, police said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition.
A second officer was taken by ambulance to a hospital for observation, but was not injured.
No one is in custody.
ATF agents have teamed with Chicago police officers in Back of the Yards to investigate gang-related rifle shootings that have become more common in that area over the last two years.
The Tribune has reported that more than 140 people have been shot — 50 of them fatally — from the fall of 2016 to the end of 2017 by gang members wielding rifles as their use spread across the South and Southwest sides.
It’s unclear, whether the agent in Friday’s shooting was wounded by rifle fire.
Luz Campos, who lives several houses down from the shooting, was in her kitchen tending to a toddler when she heard someone say, “Open the door. Open the door.”
She then heard what she thought were fireworks. “Then the cops were coming,” Campos said.
She stepped outside with the young boy and saw a rush of police cars. The boy stood behind her and waved to an officer who was walking toward the shooting scene. The officer waved back.
Other neighbors said they heard a barrage of gunshots. One woman said they were too numerous to count.
Another woman, who was asleep on a couch in her front room, said she awoke to continued gunfire. “We just heard a lot of shots,” she said.
Officers walked across Hermitage with long guns and flashlights, searching the street and a nearby park. At the corner of 43rd Street and Hermitage, about a dozen ATF agents gathered outside the crime scene.
