Chicago first responders said they were investigating how a 17-year-old boy was mistaken for dead and covered with a body sheet before bystanders saw him moving around. Erin Carey was pronounced dead 20 hours later, after the Near West Side party shooting.
The teen was shot several times in the head as he stood near five others who were wounded by what police said was potentially MAC-10 submachine gun fire early Monday morning. Police said the shots rang out in a University Village neighborhood near the U of I-Chicago campus. Fire Commissioner Jose Santiago told CBS News investigators were trying to figure out why first responders didn't notice Carey was still alive under the sheet at the scene. Paramedics were treating several of the other victims at the scene when Carey's limbs began twitching.
"He ain't dead," a woman cried out, according to the Chicago Tribune. Others shouted at the boy to get up, while shocked paramedics raced over to the boy who had sustained a "catastrophic" head wound, Chicago Police First Deputy Superintendent Anthony Riccio said.
"He was shot in the head and the prognosis is not good," Riccio initially told reporters Monday. "I do understand that paramedics looked at him, believed him to be deceased, covered him with that sheet and moved on to another individual who was nearby who was also shot. They saw motion, movement underneath the sheet. Officers who were present notified paramedics."
Carey was taken in "very critical condition" to Stroger Hospital on full life support, officials told local news outlets. But Carey was pronounced dead at 1:14 a.m. Tuesday, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. The teen lived in the 200 block of South Lockwood Street.
Riccio told the Chicago Tribune that none of the surviving victims were cooperating with the police investigation, but authorities have pieced together how a party dispute turned into gun violence. A 22-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene, while four others sustained non-life threatening injuries.
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