In the Heart of Chicago: `It`s Bad Over Here`

Aug. 22--The 19-year-old man slowly moved his bloody arm to his face about 3:40 a.m. Saturday while he lay on a city street corner and tugged at an air mask paramedics set over his face.

He rolled a bit, side to side, while Chicago Fire Department paramedics from Engine 23 worked on him.

They cut his clothing. One uncurled the tube on an IV bag. They pointed out gunshot wounds. The teen's chest heaved every few seconds.

The paramedic adjusted the mask back in place, and the teen raised his arm again, and rolled a little more. The ambulance arrived.

The teen's 41-year-old aunt, Cynthia Serrano, held a phone to her ear while walking toward the cab of the ambulance and asked, "What hospital are you guys going to?"

Nobody was in the ambulance to hear the question. Paramedics were still working on the teen.

The woman stopped and turned around toward the back of the ambulance.

"Give it a minute," said a firefighter who had been helping treat her nephew. "You'll find out."

A small crowd had gathered to watch near 23rd Place and South Hoyne Avenue in the Heart of Chicago neighborhood on the Lower West Side. The gunfire woke up neighbors, who heard shots and saw muzzle flash before hearing the man groaning in pain, yelling that he had been shot.

"F---," Serrano said as she paced the scene. "They won't let me go with him."

She and her nephew had been walking together a few minutes before he was shot. The pair split at Leavitt Street, a block west, she said. Someone in a red Jeep opened fire toward the 19-year-old, hitting him in the back.

Serrano kept pacing the scene, sending texts and making calls.

"Oh my god, I can't f---- believe it, man."

The gunfire startled 62-year-old Juan Delgado awake and for a fleeting moment, his mind raced to his grandson, who comes home from work between 1 and 2 a.m.

His grandson was asleep in his room, though. Delgado calmed down.

"It's bad over here," the longtime resident said as he stood south of the scene with his family. "It doesn't feel too good. It's not my family (but) ... you feeling. You feeling."

Paramedics lifted the 19-year-old by his arms and legs into a stretcher. His blood and vomit stained the sidewalk below. His discarded clothing remained on the sidewalk.

"I'm gonna ride with them," said one firefighter, who was walking toward the ambulance to help with medical care as it moved toward Mount Sinai Hospital, where the 19-year-old's condition was stabilized. He wore an "Engine 23" T-shirt.

"Alright," his supervisor said.

The ambulance left. Detectives arrived, and one talked with Serrano. The boy's phone, lying on the sidewalk a few feet from his bloodstains next to an evidence marker, rang as police stood guard outside the tape.

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