- A street takeover in Chicago led to the shooting death of one young man driving in the crowd.
- A local official suggests that he may not have had anything to do with the takeover.
- Authorities are still trying to find the guilty party.
Some will say that street takeovers and sideshows are just kids being kids or harmless fun, but a shooting death in Chicago proves otherwise. In the early hours of Sunday morning, a young man lost his life at 59th Street and Western Ave in Chicago.
Video from the scene suggests that he was simply trying to get through the crowd participating in the event when one participant shot him several times. According to ABC7 News, that’s what the police believe as well.
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Whether he was a participant or not the tragedy remains. The driver, Guillermo Caballero Jr., was behind the wheel of a Honda Accord. Footage from various angles indicates that he’d just exited the intersection. It appears as though the Accord hits at least three different people and one sits on the hood as it moves. Then, shots ring out.
They seem to come from a person standing in front of the Honda in a black hoodie. Understandably, chaos ensues with people running in every direction to escape the violence.
According to the family of Caballero Jr. and a police report, the young man was traveling home from a boxing match when he encountered the takeover. Officers say that as they approached they saw 20-30 cars speeding away from the scene. They recovered 10-15 shell casings.
He was pronounced dead at the scene of gunshot wounds to his head, chest, and arms. As of this writing, it doesn’t appear as though the local authorities have a lead suspect. “Street takeovers remain a danger to all communities,” the neighborhood’s alderman, Ray Lopez, said in a statement to WGN.
“CPD is working diligently to gather as much information as possible regarding the circumstances of this homicide. Anyone with information is welcome to contact the police or my office. It is my hope that Mayor Johnson makes addressing these illegal events a priority of his public safety plan for the summer,” Lopez added.
Warning: Some viewers may find the following video disturbing.
The victim’s family is unsatisfied with the response of the local police. “I got a lot of bad feelings about [Chicago] because it’s difficult to control it, the police aren’t doing a very good job because they cannot control the guns and crimes,” the victim’s father, Guillermo Caballero Sr., told the Sun-Times. “I don’t want to stay in Chicago no more.”
A GoFundMe account was set up to offer support to the family of the victim.