Man Fatality Shot By Police Outside His Home
UPDATED 06/15/11 11:40 p.m.
CHICAGO (STMW) -- Chicago Police shot and killed a man outside his Humboldt Park home Wednesday night. He is the third person shot, and second killed, on that block in the past three days.
Grand Central District police officers on patrol in the 4300 block of West Hirsch Street approached a man about 4:50 p.m. to conduct a field interview, but the man ran away, according to a police News Affairs statement.
Officers chased him on foot to the 1400 block of North Kolin Avenue, where the suspect pointed a handgun at police and officers shot him, the statement said. Police recovered a weapon on the scene.
The Cook County Medical Examiner's office identified the man as 21-year-old Pedro Gonzalez III, of 4306 W. Hirsh St. He suffered multiple gunshot wounds near his home and was pronounced dead at 5:21 p.m. at Mount Sinai Hospital. An autopsy is scheduled for Thursday.
Police said nobody else was injured.
The Independent Police Review Authority, which investigates all police-involved shootings, went to the scene Wednesday night and are conducting an on-going investigation, spokesman Carlos Weeden said.
Gonzalez's father, clinging to a photograph of his son taken in 2000, described the young man as a good kid, who was not involved in gangs. The father said he would have kicked his son out of the family home if he had been in a gang.
"He was quiet and kind of dorky," said Gonzalez's father, also named Pedro. Gonzalez said his son was a graduate of Roberto Clemente High School, and that he, the father, was trying to find his son a job.
The father, who was at work at the time of his son's shooting, said neighbors have told him his son was not armed when police shot him.
"We're investigating," the father said. "We've got a couple of lawyers involved. We'll see what happens."
Gonzalez was the third person shot on the block in the past three days. A teenage boy was murdered on Monday on his 15th birthday, and another man was wounded at the teen's Tuesday afternoon memorial.
The teen -- identified by the medical examiner's office as Jovany Diaz -- was shot in the chest at 10:03 p.m. Monday while standing on the sidewalk in the 4300 block of West Hirsch Street, police News Affairs Officer Ron Gaines said.
Diaz, of 4341 W. Hirsch St., turned 15 Monday and was pronounced dead at Mount Sinai Hospital at 10:46 p.m. on his birthday, according to the medical examiner's office.
Friends and family of Pedro Gonzalez III said he was a close friend of a 15-year-old gunned down Monday by an unknown.
A 24-year-old man was shot about 2:25 p.m. Tuesday during a memorial service for Diaz. The man was engaged in a discussion with another person, who pulled a gun and shot him in both legs, police said.
The man was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in "stable" condition.
With tensions already ratcheted up after the two earlier shootings, some witnesses to Wednesday's shooting said Gonzalez did not appear to be armed when he was shot.
The father said Gonzalez was close friends with Diaz.
Grand Central Area detectives and the IPRA are investigating the police-involved shooting.
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