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2 young boys in critical after Chicago shootings

Chicago police are investigating a pair of separate shootings in parks that left two young boys critically wounded on the city’s South Side.

The shootings Thursday night and early Friday were part of a spate of violence during the Fourth of July holiday. The boys, ages 5 and 7, were both in critical condition in a hospital in the Chicago suburb of Oak Lawn. No arrests had been made as of Friday afternoon.

The 7-year-old boy was shot twice in the head around 7:30 p.m. Thursday when two men approached a group of people in a park and opened fire, police spokesman Hector Alfaro said.

Then several miles away, 5-year-old Jaden Donald was shot around 12:40 a.m. Friday in a different park while playing with other children.

“He was standing there with me,” his mother, Jasmine Dillon Donald, told reporters outside the hospital where her son was taken. “I thought it was fireworks that were going off and there was a guy standing on the opposite side of the street shooting in the park. Everybody ran. All the kids got down.”

She said Jaden ran toward her as a man fired up to 30 rounds. As she reached out to her son, the boy fell. He had been shot in the thigh and abdomen.

“It makes me want to go in the house with my kids and never go back out,” said the mother, who cried as she recounted the shooting.

Two adults — a 34-year-old and a 28-year-old — were also injured in the shooting.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported six men have been killed and at least 28 other people wounded since Wednesday night in shootings throughout the city.

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