71-Year-Old Asian-American man Shot Multiple Times, Killed While Heading To Store To Buy Newspaper In Chinatown

By Edward Barbacena

 A 71-year-old man was shot and killed on a Chinatown sidewalk in broad daylight Tuesday.

As CBS 2’s Suzanne Le Mignot reported, police said the victim was just heading to the store to buy a newspaper when someone opened fire.

At 12:30 p.m., the man was walking on the sidewalk in the 200 block of West 23rd Place, off Wentworth Avenue, when someone pulled up and shot the victim from a silver two-door car, police said.

The gunman then got out of the car and shot the victim additional times before getting back in the car and driving away, police said. On Tuesday night, a blue car parked nearby remained at the scene with a bullet hole in its hood.

The crime scene is across the street from John C. Haines Elementary School. There were children inside the school at the time.

“When I heard the gunshots, the teacher told us to get down quickly and go on lockdown,” said one eighth grader from Haines Elementary. “We all did.”

The eighth grader spoke to us with her grandmother’s permission. She described the scene inside Haines Elementary during the shooting.

“The principal told us to turn the lights off, close the blinds, don’t say anything,” she said. “Some of my friends, I know, they were panicking. Others were crying. Some were texting their parents.”

Taylor Baird said he was sitting in his home with his wife and playing with his daughter when he heard what sounded like fireworks.

“They didn’t really stop. So I heard what I think was probably 10 or 11 shots and then probably two or three minutes later I heard sirens, and then I heard more sirens – and I came out and we are outside of a shooting, right outside my apartment,” Baird said.

The victim was rushed to Stroger Hospital of Cook County, where he was pronounced dead.

Police arrested the suspected gunman at Jackson Boulevard and the Kennedy Expressway. He was being questioned by Area Four detectives late Tuesday, and a weapon was also recovered.