The Halloween party was winding down, and the lights had just come back on when gunfire raked the crowd of a hundred people on the West Side early Sunday. One burst, then another.
As people dove for cover, Jasmine Carter said she spotted her sister across the room.
“She kept screaming, ‘My leg! My leg!’ She was limping and losing blood,” Carter said.
Carter said she and a cousin stayed with her sister as she dropped to the floor, while people around them were “running and hitting the floor.”
She was among the most seriously hurt when a man opened fire after being thrown out of the party in the 1200 block of South Pulaski Road shortly after midnight, according to police and witnesses. At least 15 people were wounded before the man ran off, and a suspect was eventually taken into custody.
No charges have been announced, but the man is a convicted felon with arrests for murder, attempted murder and carjacking. The attack was among several mass shootings over the weekend across the country, including 18 people shot in Tampa, Florida; 10 in Indianapolis; and seven in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
The victims in the North Lawndale attack range in age from 26 to 53, including nine men and six women, police said. Two of them were critically wounded, while the others were listed in good-to-fair condition.
Carter said the crowd, most of them dressed in costumes, panicked as the man kept firing into the building.
“Everybody was climbing on top of each other,’’ she said.
One of the victims was a 29-year-old man in a wheelchair who had been shot in his neck, Carter said.
“He was pushed over on the floor. ... He just thought about everybody stomping over him, so he stayed in his chair.
“Everybody was just screaming, ‘Help! Help!’” she said. “I was scared and mad and screaming for the ambulance. The first ambulance on the scene helped a woman who was inside, near the front door. She was badly hurt.”
Carter’s sister suffered gunshot wounds to her arm, buttocks, back of her knee and her leg. Two nurses at the party rushed to her aid, she said.
“They immediately tied something around her leg to stop the bleeding. One of them told her to hold her arm that was shot up in the air.”
Carter, 32, was on her way to grab flowers late Monday morning and head back to Stroger Hospital, where she said her sister was “doing better.”
Nearly 100 people had turned out for the party, which featured a prize for best costume. Comedians performed. Carter said she was dressed as the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, and her sister went as a “killer clown.”
The party was beginning to break up when the man, who was not wearing a costume, was thrown out.The man appeared to be intoxicated, according to a witness interviewed by police.
“He was drunk and dashing around, knocking over one person’s drink, and then10 minutes later, knocked another drink over,” said the witness.
“They told him, ‘Hey man, you’ve had enough, you’re done,’” the witness said. “After staffers escorted him out, he stayed around near the outside of the building but kept trying to get back in. They told him, ‘No, you can’t.’”
With the lights on and the music turned off, the man forced his way past security.
“He wasn’t’ shooting at anybody in particular; he was squeezing off shots at whoever was in front of him,” the witness said.
Police had been parked nearby, and the witness said he saw officers running toward the gunman and taking him into custody. Other officers applied tourniquets to several victims.
Carter said she discovered a “knot” on her thigh Monday morning and believes she was grazed by a bullet. She and her sister are from the western suburbs, and she said they were “over” visiting that area of the city.
“It’s traumatizing to go anywhere in that area,” she said.
Myrani Thompson, 28, said she attended the party with her mother and cousin. She said it felt like she was “in a horror movie” as shots rang out.
“You were just seeing everybody just dropping and screaming they were shot, people were crying,” Thompson said. “It was scary, it was really scary. Blood was everywhere, people were everywhere. It’s a moment I don’t want to relive.”
Thompson said her family members weren’t injured, but a friend of hers, a 29-year-old man, suffered a gunshot wound to his back.
The man uses a wheelchair, and when Thompson, who is pursuing a nursing degree, saw there weren’t enough ambulances, she helped apply pressure to her friend’s wounds until more medical personnel arrived.
“That’s what I’m going to school for, so I just thought on my feet, and I just got to putting pressure on his wounds until the fire department got there,” Thompson said. “I kind of knew what to do and how to react in that situation. The first thing is to not panic, even though I wanted to.”
Thompson said everybody had been enjoying the party, and the shooter was the only one who seemed to have an issue.
“We are all just having a good time, and he was the only one out of the whole party who was giving a hard time,” Thompson said.
The older sister of another victim said her 26-year-old brother is still at Mount Sinai after suffering multiple gunshot wounds to his buttocks. The woman said she’s thankful her brother is alive, but he’s “not doing good.”
Her brother is a father to a 4-year-old girl and also a stepfather to three other children, she said, adding he lives in Rockford with his girlfriend. The couple had traveled to the city for the party.
Now his life has been turned upside down, she said.
“He has to have surgery, now he has a colostomy bag, and he has a feeding tube,” said the 32-year-old, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.
The woman, who lives in Houston, Texas, said she’s been communicating with her younger brother as much as she can. “He’s bad, he’s in a lot of pain,” she said.
The woman cited violence in the city as one of the reasons she decided to leave the Chicago area years ago when her daughter was born.
“This is a prime example of why I left,” the woman said.
The party was held at Studio 1258, an art gallery that police said has a “history of throwing unlicensed events.” Police said Studio 1258 will be closed under the city’s summary closure ordinance, which gives the police department the power to immediately shut down businesses associated with violence.
The business previously received a cease-and-desist order and citations for operating without proper licenses, a spokesperson for the Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection said in a statement.
A person associated with the business couldn’t be reached for comment.
