Damario Ferguson said he was “feeling good” Tuesday afternoon, despite losing a kidney and part of his colon and large intestine as a result of a shooting Friday night after a Mount Carmel-Morgan Park football game.
Damario, 15, was one of seven young people who were shot over the weekend in a spate of attacks as the school year gets underway.
“I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t nervous. I just kept my calm. It was toward the end of the game, we were just leaving, and I just heard shots and started running,” Damario told the Sun-Times.
Damario, a varsity football player at Percy Julian High School, was recovering at University of Chicago Medical Center. His mom and grandmother were at his bedside after the attack outside Mount Carmel High School in Woodlawn. A 16-year-old girl was also wounded.
“I got hit once, and I kept running. I didn’t know I got hit until blood started coming from my hoodie,” said Damario.
Once he saw blood, he stopped running, and a friend and others with him called for help.
Damario said he was at the game to scout the other teams.
He said he still plans to attend his team’s games, and isn’t thrilled about taking time off to recuperate from the shooting.
“I don’t want to, but I might have to,” he said of having to sit out games.
“He has a long road ahead of him,’’ said his grandmother, Rhonda Matthews.
Shot in the same attack was 16-year-old Gyanna Reed, who was there with her 15-year-old sister, who was not injured.
Gyanna and her sister, Morgan Park fans, said they were waiting near a parking lot for their aunt, Rashida White, to pick them up.
“I got a phone call and rushed over,’’ White told the Sun-Times.
Gyanna, shot in her foot, couldn’t walk, and she was bleeding.
“She’s really kind of traumatized,” White said. “It’s horrible.”
Shortly after 7 p.m. Sunday, a 13-year-old boy was setting up a speaker at an outdoor party with his friends when a black Kia SUV pulled up, and someone inside shot him in his head, leaving a pool of blood at the corner of South Elizabeth and West 60th streets, according to a police report. Six shell casings were found at the scene.
John Webb, a longtime Englewood resident, said he returned home hours after the shooting to find police tape everywhere and party remnants scattered in his yard.
“It was some sort of party, because there was chips bags, juice bottles and shoes,” Webb said. “There was a bloody rag in the grass, and I had to clean it all up.”
Webb said he didn’t know the boy who was shot, but he couldn’t believe the shooting had occurred just outside his home.
“I’ve been here 23 years. I always sit on the porch, and it’s quiet around here,” Webb said. “I was very surprised.”
Less than two hours earlier, a 6-year-old boy had been shot during a family gathering in Washington Heights on the South Side.
The boy was in a home in the 9100 block of South Racine Avenue when he was shot in his right hip, Chicago police said. His mom began driving him to the hospital, but she pulled over and called police, and an ambulance took him the rest of the way to Comer Children’s Hospital. He was listed in good condition, police said.
About 11:30 p.m. Friday, another 15-year-old boy was shot twice in his lower back in the 2200 block of West 21st Street, police said. The boy, a student at Chicago Bulls College Prep, was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital but was transferred to Stroger Hospital, where he was listed in serious condition. Witnesses told police that someone in a white vehicle that looked like a Kia Soul shot him.
Meanwhile, two 15-year-old boys were shot and killed over the weekend:
- A still-unidentified 15-year-old boy was brought to South Shore Hospital at 7:40 p.m. Monday with multiple gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead. The location of the shooting was unknown, according to police.
- Tyler West-Moreland died after he was shot Sunday in East Garfield Park on the West Side. West-Moreland was shot multiple times about 5:05 p.m. in the 2900 block of West Walnut Street, police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he died Monday, officials said.
