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FOX 32 / SUN-TIMES MEDIA WIRE - A man and a 2-year-old boy were shot and killed in an attack that also wounded a pregnant woman Tuesday afternoon in North Lawndale.
The woman was streaming video on Facebook Live at the time of the shooting, which occurred in an alley in the 2300 block of South Kenneth Avenue.
The three were in a car in the alley about 1:30 p.m. when another vehicle drove past and someone got out, pulled out a weapon and fired shots, according to Chicago Police.
The toddler, Lavontay White; and Lazarec Collins were both shot in the head and taken to Stroger Hospital, where they died, authorities said. Collins lived in the Little Village neighborhood.
The 25-year-old woman was shot in the abdomen, and listed in fair condition at Mount Sinai Hospital, police said. Her unborn child was also listed in fair condition.
After the shooting, detectives walked in the alley, pointing occasionally at a maroon four-door sedan with several bullet holes visible in the rear, passenger-side window. The car seemed to have veered into a fence, coming to rest partially in a vacant lot.
Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said the woman was the boy’s aunt.
At a press conference across from the crime scene, Johnson said a male “documented gang member” who had been in the car was the target of a gunman who fired “several shots” into the vehicle.
Police told FOX 32 there was a previous beef between the man in his 20's who was killed and the gunman, but they declined to offer specifics.
The Facebook video, which had been viewed more than 100,000 times on Facebook just three hours after the shooting, shows a young woman in a black hoodie films as she sits in the passenger seat of a car, smiling and singing along to a rap song with the driver, a young man in a white hoodie and baseball cap. As she pans the camera phone back and forth inside the car, the head of a child seated in the back of the car is briefly visible.
The woman’s cheery expression changes, as she peers outside the car and to her left, shortly before the crack of a gunshot. The woman tumbles out the door of the car and sprints through a lot, an alley, and through a doorway, screaming for help.
The woman bolts into a house, and the screen goes dark but the audio continues. The woman says she’s been shot in the stomach, but doesn’t want to go to the hospital.
“I can’t go to the hospital,” she says. “They’ll send me to jail.”
On Monday, the woman had posted a picture of a red four-door, captioned “fresh car wash get new tires still trying to sell it doe.” Beneath the photo, more than one person chastised her for giving valuable intelligence to her boyfriend’s enemies, or “opps.”
“U posted this pick yo boyfriend opps saw it and they got on y’all ass,” wrote one poster. “sad but if you f – – – wit the streets or street people you gotta be smarter young one.”
Sounding a familiar call to action, Johnson said tougher gun laws are needed to abate the violence in the city.
“We just cannot afford to have our children shot down for something they had no involvement in,” Johnson said.
The horrifying realities of what happened in the shooting left Tomias Jordan shaken. He walked up on the victim and, after seeing her condition, could be heard yelling at police.
“I seen them take the baby out of the car and put him in the ambulance and he was bleeding profusely and it was sad, it was sad,” said witness Tomias Jordan.
A community activist called on anyone with information to do the right thing.
“We're asking you, turn the killers in. If your son or your nephew is out here killing people, being ignorant to what's going on in his communities, he deserve to be in jail,” said Ja’Mal Green.
For Tomias Jordan, this shooting has convinced him it's time to get out of Chicago.
“It was chaos man to see that and you know, I got a young kid myself and I don't want him to be exposed to that, so I said, next year, we out of here man, I can't take it no more,” Jordan said.