Bernadine Murphy-Wilson’s two teenage boys yelled frantically to her in the telephone late Monday night, while their younger sister shouted in the background.
The mother couldn’t understand their panic until three words came through: “Granny’s been shot.”
A bullet had pierced 74-year-old Charlyne Murphy’s back as she watched television in the living room of her South Shore home. She remains at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, awaiting surgery.
Police said at least one person in a dark-color vehicle opened fire about 11 p.m. in the 8100 block of South Oglesby Avenue before fleeing. No arrests had been made by late Tuesday.
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“I know she didn’t deserve it,” Murphy-Wilson said Tuesday afternoon. “It’s nothing we’ve brought on ourselves. It’s a total injustice. Someone should pay for this.”
Murphy, a retired Chicago Board of Education worker who has lived in the bungalow since 1971, shares the residence with her daughter and three grandchildren.
Just before the shooting, Murphy’s grandsons, Demetrious, 13, and Phillip, 14, played cards in a bedroom while their sister, 10, Brionna, read a book nearby.
Their grandmother sat in the living room watching an “Oprah” show. Murphy typically waited for her daughter’s phone call saying she was leaving her job as an aide at a drug and alcohol treatment center and would be home momentarily.
Instead of a ringing phone, shots rang out. One sounded like it went into the air and another that pinged like a bullet striking metal on the side of the house, the children said.
Then, a pause.
Demetrious said, “Duck!”
Phillip and Brionna rolled low, onto the floor.
Murphy got up and headed toward the bedroom to check on the kids.
They heard another gunshot, one that punched through the front window of their house. Their grandmother called out, “I’m hit!”
Demetrious said he told his grandmother to sit down and stay calm.
The children called 911, then their mother, who rushed to the hospital and met the ambulance as it arrived.
“My mother always is in good spirits,” Murphy-Wilson said. [She] said, `I’m all right. My arm hurts,’ when I saw her.
Murphy-Wilson, 42, said the family has no idea who the shooter or shooters were.
“[My mother] takes in everybody. Most of the block has lived here at one time or another,” she said.
Mayor Richard Daley called the shooting unacceptable. “You have guns in society. Gangbangers and drug dealers don’t care who they shoot,” Daley said Tuesday during an unrelated news conference. “You can be a senior citizen, you can be in your home, you can be walking down the street, you can be going to church. You can be a child, a baby, you can be a teenager.”
The shooters have “a total disregard of human beings,” Daley said.
Murphy, still in good spirits, had less anger for her attackers as she spoke from her hospital bed.
“Last night, I said maybe it’s time to move,” she said. “But I know where I am, God is. I just don’t know who would be shooting or why,” she said.
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