Horrifying moment man shot dead while sitting at Chicago gas station

Chicago Police are investigating after video shows the horrifying moment three armed suspects jumped out of a vehicle and began firing at another vehicle. One man has died and another was injured in the possible ‘gang hit’ incident which took place in the early morning hours of Tuesday, January 3. Shocking video posted online of the shooting shows the unidentified and still at large male suspects approaching the car and opening fire on the two victims.

The shooting comes as the Midwest Dem-run city, managed by Mayor Lori Lighfoot, continues to experience a rampant crime wave with more than 695 murders and more than 2,800 shootings in 2022. The video of the January 3 shooting shows two small vehicles at the CitGo gas near West 63rd Street and Racine Avenue just after 2:30am. Pictured: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (left) alongside Vice President Kamala Harris (right). 

Police said the victims, two unidentified men, were sitting in their car when three men got out of a gray Hyundai sedan and fired shots. Chicago Police detectives confirmed with DailyMail.com that one of the two victims was rushed to the University of Chicago Medical Center with wounds to the chest.

The man, who was 45 years old, was later pronounced dead from his injuries. A 35-year-old man who was in the car at the time of the shooting was also transported to the hospital. That victim sustained gunshot injuries to his right leg and is in fair condition.

Video of the incident shows the second victim narrowly running away from a stream of bullets fired at him in the parking lot. DailyMail.com reached out to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office for the identification of the deceased.

‘Next of kin has not been notified at this time,’ an official with the agency said in a statement sent Wednesday. At this time, police have no suspects and no one in custody. It’s unclear whether the shooting was random or targeted. Area One detectives are investigating the matter.

The shooting is just the latest in a string of violent crimes sweeping the city, run by Lightfoot (pictured). Just hours after the shooting took place, Lightfoot sparked outrage for sharing an article covering the dip in homicides Chicago saw in 2022.

‘We have more work to do, but through police training and accountability with strategic community investments, we’re seeing steady improvements in public safety efforts,’ Lightfoot tweeted. Constituents were not having it, however, filling her replies with references to recent crimes, including the Tuesday morning gas station shooting. ‘Yeah, Chicago looks awesome,’ one person said, attaching the video of the shooting. ‘You have failed. Public safety has never been worse,’ responded another person. ‘I saw an improvement in my overall safety as soon as I left the city,’ said another. ‘There used to be safe neighborhood in Chicago before you became Mayor now no neighborhood is safe,’ wrote another person.

The city saw a decrease in shootings and murders, which one local law enforcement official said makes little difference in how residents feel. ‘I don’t think that those numbers are going to say anything other than “yeah, it’s a little bit lower than it was last year, but are you safe? Do you feel safe?” And the answer to that is unequivocally no,’ said former federal prosecutor Duane Deskins. Overall crime was up a staggering 41 percent from 2021. ‘Economic vitality of this city is tied to safety. If people don’t feel safe, they’re not going to restaurants. If people don’t feel safe, they’re not going to establish businesses,’ Deskins said.

‘You have to reduce the violence significantly — this is not significant — and then prevent it from coming back,’ the former prosecutor said. In 2021, the Chicago Police Department laid out plans to improve community relations, including town halls to address residents’ concerns. The ideas, Deskins told WGN-TV, only go so far, however.

The former prosecutor said he believes policy changes are the way to make the residents feel safer and respected. ‘We should be thinking about a long-term strategy to bring us all together — businesses, cops, courts, nonprofits — to try and think about a comprehensive solution to reduce the violence in this city and not simply a week-to-week, holiday-to-holiday type [of] strategy,’ Deskins said.

Lightfoot, a once major proponent of defunding the police, has come under fire by those on the left and right over her funding of the Chicago police force. The mayor proposed a $64 million increase to the Chicago Police Department, including the addition of 35 new officers, in 2022, which a sparked backlash from her left-wing followers. Voters who endorsed the Democrat called her to move a stark 180-degree change and labeled the move ‘refund the police.’ In 2021, Lightfoot raised the Chicago Police Department’s budget from $1.7 billion to $1.9 billion. Lightfoot is up for re-election as mayor on February 28.

Despite the influx of cash, the city continues to see high crime rates, especially in comparison to other U.S. cities. In late December, DailyMail.com reported that young men in Chicago’s worst neighborhoods are more likely to be shot and killed than those who fought on the bloodiest front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq. A study published by Brandon del Pozo, a former New York City cop, and Brown University scholar, found that gun deaths in Chicago and Philadelphia’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods are worse Del Pozo’s study examined data from 2020 and 2021 in four major U.S. cities, focusing on shootings involving nearly 130,000 men aged between 18 and 29. ‘Working as a police officer, I witnessed the toll of gun violence, and how disruptive it was for families and communities,’ del Pozo said.

‘It stood out to me that the burden was not distributed evenly by geography or demographic. Some communities felt the brunt of gun violence much more acutely than others.’ Black and Hispanic men accounted for 96 percent of those shot and killed, and 97 percent of those injured in a shooting, according to the data.

‘We often hear opposing claims about gun violence that fall along partisan lines: One is that big cities are war zones that require a severe crackdown on crime, and the other is that our fears about homicides are greatly exaggerated and don’t require drastic action,’ del Pozo said. ‘We wanted to use data to explore these claims — and it turns out both are wrong. While most city residents are relatively safe from gun violence, the risks are more severe than war for some demographics.’

Want more stories like this from the Daily Mail? Visit our profile page here and hit the follow button above for more of the news you need.