A Brookfield man has been charged in the Tuesday shooting of two boys, ages 12 and 16, outside a library in West Garfield Park.
Police charged Adam Avizius, 37, with one felony count of aggravated battery for allegedly shooting the two children outside the Legler Regional Branch Library, according to the Chicago Police Department.
Officers arrested Avizius, as well as a female suspect, shortly after the 5:30 p.m. shooting two blocks away from the library, located at 115 S. Pulaski Road. Avizius is set to appear in bond court Friday, police said.
The 16-year-old boy was shot twice in the leg, while the 12-year-old was struck by gunfire in the lower back, police said. The 12-year-old was carried into the library by a security officer, who rendered aid to the child inside. The two boys were taken to area hospitals, with the younger boy in fair condition and the older boy in good condition.
The shooting prompted local leaders and anti-violence activists to take to the library’s front steps Thursday and call for more investment in underserved neighborhoods as a way to reduce the city’s entrenched gun violence.
The shooting was “nothing new to Chicago,” but rather a “continued expression” of problems afflicting the community, said Theodore Joseph Crawford, executive director of the Garfield Park Rite To Wellness Collaborative.
“The ills of our community are well-documented: drug use, poverty, institutional racism,” Crawford continued. “They are the things that create the environments in which young people have guns in their hands — who naturally are emotional because they are immature emotionally — are gonna respond in ways that oftentimes cause harm to themselves and to others.”
____
