A 9-year-old boy was shot in the head early this morning in the backyard of his
Roseland neighborhood home on the South Side after he and his father went outside to bring in the family dog chained there, police said.
The boy -- identified by the family as Ivan Burns Jr. -- was in critical condition at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where family members were gathered this morning.
The father and son were either watching TV or playing video games when they decided to retire at about 3:20 a.m. But first, they went into the backyard of their home in the first block of East 100th Place to get the dog, said Police News Affairs Officer Laura Kubiak.
Several shots rang out and the boy was struck in the head, Kubiak said.
Ivan is a student at Bennett Elementary School on the Far South Side, his family said.
"He's a bright kid. He's like any kid, he wants to have fun," said Ivan's aunt, Chiquita Burns, as she waited at the hopsital. "My nephew is my baby. I call him my baby. My mom practically raised him with his father.
"People need to stop with this senseless shooting," she said. "They need to realize that our people (are) losing their world over some (nonsense) that other people (are) doing.
"Leave our kids alone!"
One neighbor told
WGN-TV she heard gunshots and went inside and locked her door. Later, she heard more gunshots. Altogether, she heard eight shots.
Another resident said the Burns family are “good Christian people” and could not imagine how this could happen.
The block where Ivan lives is lined with single-family homes, several of them boarded up. Yellow police tape cordoned off half the block this morning, including outside the home where the boy was shot.
Evidence technicians were walking in and out of the boy's two-story home. They were also moving back and forth behind it.
Children played basketball in the middle of the street as onlookers gathered at the end of the block, at State Street.
BEAT 511
