Police: Boy wounded in shooting in Prospect Heights
Prospect Heights police early Friday responded to what's believed to be the gang-related shooting of a boy, ending two months of quiet in what had been a problematic early autumn in the same area.
While driving in the 800 block of the city's Piper Lane about 2:10 a.m., a Prospect Heights police officer reported hearing multiple shots fired.
Other officers responded to the call and found a boy with a gunshot wound to his lower back on the 600 block of Apple Drive. His injury has been described as not life-threatening, but Police Chief William Caponigro believes that may be due to the intervention of his officers.
The responding officers applied trauma bandaging to the victim, who was taken to a triage hospital.
"I would say they might have saved his life," Caponigro said. "There was a lot of blood. If no one had found him, he might have bled to death. He'd walked about as far as he could, about a block."
Exactly two months earlier, on Oct. 30, officers discovered about 40 spent rounds of ammunition at Willow Trails Park, where Caponigro said one gang had tried to make a statement by firing toward the residences of rival gang members.
The members of those gangs are generally in the range of 13- to 15-year-olds whom the police department had heard complaints about from teachers in the area, Caponigro said.
The chief added at the time that the department was taking such activity seriously, and the strong police presence that's been maintained in the area since then made it all but disappear until Friday morning.
"We've saturated the area," Caponigro said. "We always have someone on the east side."
That is why the response to Friday's shooting was initiated by an officer who heard it rather than by a 911 call.