Girl, 15, shot in West Garfield Park on way to grandmother’s
By MAUDLYNE IHEJIRIKA Staff Reporter/mihejirika@suntimes.com August 31, 2012 11:33AM
Chicago Police investigators on the scene where a young girl was shot in the abdomen while outside in the West Garfield Park neighborhood Friday August 31, 2012. | Brian Jackson~Sun-Times
Updated: October 2, 2012 6:06AM
Telissia Shields was walking home from a summer visit to her school with a friend Friday morning when shots rang out in the 4200 block of West Wilcox Street in West Garfield Park. The girls started running, and Telissia, 15, began screaming. The high school freshman had been shot in the stomach. “I was upstairs and heard all these gunshots,” said Catherine Gregory, 55. She lives next door to a home where yellow police crime-scene tape stretched Friday afternoon along the sidewalk to the corner of Wilcox and Kildare. “I looked out the window and saw this red car speeding around the corner. “We came running outside and saw the girl lying over there screaming, and police were already there.” Telissia was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where her condition was described as stable. Telissia, a recent graduate of May Elementary School who lives in the 5200 block of West Lexington Street, had been on her way to her grandmother’s home in the 4300 block of West Wilcox when the shooting occurred just after 11 a.m. about a block away. Telissia’s grandmother, Loretta Wesley, 55, said she couldn’t believe what happened. “She’s such a good child, very sweet,” the grandmother said. “She didn’t deserve this. She was just an innocent bystander, coming home from school. Why my granddaughter? This is getting just so crazy.”
