Two teenagers were shot near Mount Carmel High School shortly after a football game at the Woodlawn neighborhood institution late Friday.
The attack was reported about 10:15 p.m. in the 1500 block of East 64th Street, where officers found a 15-year-old boy with a gunshot wound to the abdomen and a 16-year-old girl who’d been hit in the foot, according to Chicago police, who didn’t have details on the circumstances.
They were taken to Comer Children’s Hospital, with the boy listed in critical condition and the girl in good condition.
The shots rang out just north of Mount Carmel’s football field, about 20 minutes after the Caravan beat Morgan Park High School 22-12, Mount Carmel president Brendan Conroy said in an email to parents Saturday. The victims aren’t affiliated with the all-boys Catholic school, he added.
Sources told the Sun-Times that the shooting was thought to have been a targeted attack, and that the wounded teens attend another South Side high school.
It happened near a Mount Carmel parking lot that’s a popular tailgating spot for fans of the area’s top-ranked high school football team.
Morgan Park coach Chris James said he and his team heard the gunfire while heading to their bus.
“We were walking in the other direction but you could see everyone running,” James said.
One witness, a journalist there to cover the game, saw two apparent shooters running away from the scene near the school at 6410 S. Dante Ave.
Mount Carmel High School in the Woodlawn neighborhood is seen in this photo, Saturday, Sept. 2, 2023, after two teens were shot after a football game Friday night.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
“They were running right past my car,” the witness said. “I closed my computer so they wouldn’t see the light.”
The father of a Mount Carmel football player — a firefighter — tended to one of the victims until paramedics arrived.
No arrests have been announced. Police were reviewing surveillance video from the school grounds.
“The entire Chicago Public Schools family wishes the victims of this incident a speedy and full recovery,” a Chicago Public Schools spokesperson said in a statement. “Our thoughts are with these young people, their families, and all those impacted by this incident.”
Conroy said Mount Carmel leaders would meet next week with police and safety advisers “to review our safety protocols for football games and other high attendance events here at Mount Carmel.”
“While we pray today for the full recovery of the two young visitors to our campus who were injured last night, we continue our efforts to make Chicago a better place to live and grow up as a young man,” Conroy said.
The school leader added that police had detailed two squad cars to the campus, where on the morning after the shooting, there was no sign of the chaos from the previous night. Three women practiced yoga near a basketball court while two boys were tossed around a football.
Ald. Desmon Yancy (5th) bemoaned the fact “that our young people have to deal with gun violence.”
“I just want to emphasize I’ve got a commitment to young people, whether it is keeping them safe, finding jobs and making sure that they get what they need from our school system,” Yancy said.
