Two girls, 12 and 13 years old, injured in Chicago shooting

Four girls just walking on the street near a park were surprised and scared when shooters opened fire from their speeding car and hit 2 of the girls. From the article:

"The guy just started letting off a lot of gunshots -- pow, pow, pow, pow -- just started shooting," Shorter said. "That's all she heard. . . She was running and ducking at the same time. . . She didn't even know she was shot at first.

"One of the young ladies that was with her, she was wounded real bad," Shorter said. "She was stretched out on the ground."

Tishona suffered a gunshot wound to the buttocks and was treated at a hospital and released.

Nakia was hit twice in the abdomen and was taken in serious-to-critical condition to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, according to police and Chicago Fire Department officials. 

As she sat by her daughter's hospital bed this morning, Letha Henderson said the girl was lucky the bullets missed any vital organs.  She underwent surgery overnight, and doctors said there weren't any bullet fragments or internal bleeding. She was expected to return home either tonight or Thursday. (...) 

Police say the girls were not the intended targets, and they were investigating whether the gunman fired on a passing car and hit them instead as they walked from Cooper Park. Authorities said the shooting occurred in an area at the center of an internal conflict involving the Gangster Disciples street gang.

"The gun violence, it has to stop," Shorter said. "These were grammar school kids, walking, just trying to live as young ladies. . .The problem of it is, you have gunshots, bullets going everywhere and the wrong ones are getting shot. It could have been anybody's child. Those are all of our children. It's pretty bad, it's pretty bad. I'm very angry."

The park sits in a residential area largely removed from the violence and shootings that plague the neighborhood east of Halsted Street, according to police records. The police beat that covers the park hasn’t had a fatal shooting since May. And the police district has had six fewer homicides so far this year than it did through the same time last year.

However, there were three other shootings in the West Pullman neighborhood just this week:

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• A 16-year-old boy was shot in the 12400 block of South Perry Avenue in the West Pullman neighborhood at about 5 p.m. Monday, Chicago police said. He was standing on the street when shots rang out, police said.

The boy was shot three times and was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, according to Chicago Fire Department Media spokesman Larry Langford.

Kids should be able to walk on the streets of our communities without fear of being shot.