In a shooting the police said was sparked by road rage, a 3-year-old Chicago boy was killed Friday night on the Southwest Side as he sat in the back seat of his mother’s sport-utility vehicle.
The slain boy, identified as Mateo Zastro, is one of the youngest victims of violence in Chicago this year.
His mother and the three other children escaped harm from the barrage of gunfire unleashed from another car in the 4400 block of West Marquette Road in West Lawn, according to the Chicago police.
Police Cmdr. Brian Spreyne said the attack stemmed from a “road-rage incident” involving the mother and another vehicle that started on Cicero Avenue, though it wasn’t clear how it got started.
No one has been arrested.
Spreyne said Mateo was riding with his mother and the other kids just before 8:40 p.m. Friday when a male passenger in the backseat of a red car — possibly a Dodge Charger or a Ford Mustang — started shooting.
The boy was shot in the head and died about eight hours later at Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
The shooting happened near Mateo’s home.
The boy’s mother tried to get away from the other car, Spreyne said, but it followed close behind.
“I want to offer our deep and profound condolences to the family of this precious 3-year-old child,” Spreyne said. “Our hearts are broken by the senseless act of violence that took this child’s life.”
Reached by phone Saturday, Mateo’s mother didn’t want to speak with a reporter.
Roger Ramirez, who lives near where the shooting occurred, said Saturday that he was closing the curtains in his living room when it happened. Ramirez, who ducked for cover until the shooting stopped and he heard cars speed away, said there were several shots — one bullet, apparently a stray shot, struck a window frame at his house.
Shattered glass from a car window littered the intersection of West Marquette Road and South Kenneth Avenue.
“It’s just so sad to see it escalate to that and kill that little boy,” Ramirez said. “I moved here recently because I thought it was a safe neighborhood.”
Ismeal Fernandez, who also lives nearby, said it sounded at first like a car crash, which he said isn’t uncommon on that stretch of Marquette Road. But then he heard more shots and ran to check on his elderly parents.
“This never happens here in the 20 years my parents and I have been in this house, something like this hasn’t happened,” Fernandez said.
Mateo’s mother drove off from where the shooting happened before flagging down officers for help, according to police radio transmissions, which show that a police officer quickly identified the shooting as a case of road rage.
Dispatchers first broadcast an alert at 8:38 p.m. of possible gunfire near Marquette and South Kenneth Avenue. The city’s ShotSpotter gunshot-detection system indicated that 10 high-capacity rounds were fired in the vicinity of that residential Southwest Side intersection.
Within two minutes, an officer found the SUV with the mother and three children less than a mile away, near a shopping plaza at 66th Street and South Pulaski Road.
“I’m with the person shot,” the officer radioed, following up seconds later. “I have a child shot.”
She told a dispatcher: “I’m taking the child to Christ Hospital. I need someone to go sit with the car on 66th and Pulaski.”
Another officer radioed, “There’s a few other kids in the car.”
The sound of children sobbing could be heard in the background.
On Marquette, where police determined the shots were fired, officers found broken glass at the Kenneth Avenue intersection and bullet holes in the window of a home nearby, according to police radio dispatches.
“They’re saying it was road rage,” another officer radioed. “And a red Mustang was involved.”
At Saturday’s police news conference, Andrew Holmes, a community activist, offered a $7,000 reward for information on the shooting. The money for the reward comes from the Andrew Holmes Foundation, Taste for the Homeless and the Rev. Michael Pfleger.
“The public can help solve this. If you saw anything, know anything, please give up any information,” Holmes said. “We need to get these baby killers off the streets.”
At least 284 minors have been shot in Chicago this year, according to a Chicago Sun-Times tally. Forty-three of those victims 17 or younger were killed. There have been 33 gunshot victims 12 or younger, and six of them were killed.
The youngest, 5-month-old Cecilia Thomas, was shot in the head in South Shore in June.
Among the other children killed in Chicago this year, Melissa Ortega, 8, was hit by an errant bullet in January in South Lawndale. Devin McGregor, 5, died days after a shooting in Rogers Park in August. On the South Side, two 12-year-olds have been killed: Marcell Wilson in January, and Nyzireya Moore in March.
Chicago also has seen several cases of violent road rage this year, including an off-duty Chicago police officer who was wounded last month in what the police said was traffic conflict and, in August, a man who was stabbed to death at a busy River North intersection.
Contributing: Cindy Hernandez
