Chicago, Illinois: Man Killed and Another Wounded in Loop Shooting on Lake Street Near Wabash Avenue

A man was killed and another man was wounded in a shooting on Lake Street in Chicago's Loop early Wednesday, according to Chicago police accounts carried by local stations. ABC 7 Chicago reported that the shooting happened at about 2:39 a.m. on Lake Street near Wabash Avenue. WGN and CBS News Chicago reported the same outcome on Wednesday morning: one man dead, and a second man wounded. Police had not named either man in the reports, and the reports did not give their ages or the wounded man's condition.

A downtown street lined with markers

The first accounts from the scene came before any detailed police report. FOX 32 Chicago reported that police were called to the area around 2:30 a.m. after reports that two people had been shot, and that video from the scene showed at least 24 evidence markers scattered across the ground. Witnesses told the station that someone stepped out of a car and opened fire before chasing the victims, and that the gunfire began at State and Lake streets, near the Chicago Theatre, and continued down Lake Street, past the front of Harold Washington College, toward Wabash Avenue. The station said an official police report was not yet available when it first published.

NBC Chicago, which also reached out to the Chicago Police Department for details, reported a heavy police presence at State and Lake early Wednesday, with police tape blocking parts of the street and sidewalk and yellow evidence markers lining the sidewalk as officers worked. The later station reports, citing police, settled the central fact of the morning: of the two men shot on Lake Street, one had died.

What is still not known

The reports reviewed on Wednesday morning did not say who fired, whether anyone was in custody, or what led to the shooting. They did not say where the wounded man was taken for treatment. Until police release a fuller account, the confirmed public record is short: a shooting at about 2:39 a.m. on a central Loop street, two men shot, one of them killed, and a scene that stretched from State Street toward Wabash Avenue under the elevated tracks.

Second Loop shooting since Monday night

The Lake Street shooting was the second shooting in the Loop since Monday night. At about 9:45 p.m. on Monday, October 26, a gunman shot two men inside a 7-Eleven in the 0-100 block of East Adams Street, near Wabash Avenue, only a few blocks south of the Lake Street scene. Police said a 26-year-old man inside the store was struck multiple times after a brief struggle with an armed person who had pointed a gun at him, and a 23-year-old customer was grazed in the foot. Both were taken to Northwestern Hospital in fair condition, and the shooter fled east on Adams Street. No one was in custody in that case as of Tuesday morning, police said. Two nights later, the same downtown blocks were taped off again, this time with a man dead on Lake Street.