Victim recalls recent gunfire incident in Jefferson Park and how he later found car apparently driven by the offenders parked in Mariano’s lot on Elston; gunfire from the incident also hit a home on Carmen

by BRIAN NADIG

A man’s car was riddled with bullets at about 2 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 12, at Leclaire and Carmen avenues near Beaubien School, but he did not realize until minutes later that he had suffered a graze wound to his back.

A gunman in another vehicle, described as a black Infiniti Q50, had opened fire on the 22-year-old man’s 2019 Volkswagen Jetta, with about seven bullets hitting the vehicle, according to police.

The Infiniti was turning right onto southbound Leclaire from eastbound Carmen at the time of the incident while the Jetta was in the process of turning right onto Carmen from northbound Leclaire.

“Maybe they thought I was somebody else,” the man said when he reached out to Nadig Newspapers. He added that he has no idea why he was shot at and that he usually just notices people walking their dogs in the normally quiet Jefferson Park neighborhood.

He suspects that the gunman stood up and fired through the Infiniti’s sunroof due to the angle the bullets hit his car, which had multiple bullet holes on its passenger side. In addition, three shots hit the front window of a home in the 5000 block of West Carmen Avenue, according to 16th (Jefferson Park) District police.

“It was really fast,” he said of he shooting. “It’s kind of crazy.” With his home blocks away in neighboring Forest Glen, the man said that he decided to drive home and call the police from there. He realized that he had been shot as he opened the door to his home.

“That’s when I felt a sting,”

he said. Responding officers reported that he had a laceration on his back between his shoulder blades and was transported to Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where he was treated and released, according to po- lice.

“I was actually in a lot of pain after the first day,” he said.

Three days after the shooting the man, who works as an Instacart grocery deliverer, drove to the Mariano’s Fresh Market at 5353 N. Elston Ave., and to his initial disbelief, he saw the Infiniti which he believes is the one used in the shooting.

“I keep seeing that car everyday I wake up,” he said.

The vehicle found in the Mariano lot had been reported stolen and matches the de- scription of the vehicle where the gunshots came from, and detectives are reviewing the evidence, police said.

The man said that the Infiniti has tinted windows but that the driver’s side window was partially down and that the driver appeared to be in his late 20s and had a dark complexion.

Through Oct. 16, there have been 15 shooting incidents reported in 2022 in the 16th District compared to 19 during the same period last year, police said.