On the Southwest Side block where many kids spend their days playing outside, more than 50 neighbors gathered Sunday around the steps where Adrian Luna, 13, was shot and killed the night before.
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“It is very hard to lose a loved one,” the Rev. Jose Rojas told the crowd, warning that the community should come together to prevent such violence from happening again. “Today, it happened to them. Tomorrow, it could be any of us.”
Adrian was with two friends Saturday night on the steps of his Brighton Park neighborhood home in the 4600 block of South Spaulding Avenue when two gunmen apparently emerged from a gangway and shot at the three youths, police and family said.
Adrian’s older brother, Mario Lopez, 29, was a few houses away and rushed to his fallen brother.
“I ran screaming his name. I saw him in a fetal position,” Lopez said, tears welling in his eyes. “He stopped breathing in my arms.”
The Irene C. Hernandez Middle School seventh-grader was a happy-go-lucky boy who excelled at math and loved horror movies, his family said. On Easter Sunday, Adrian had planned to trick his family by hiding oranges instead of eggs for the hunt, they said.
Among Adrian’s close friends are the two wounded in the attack. A 15-year-old boy was shot in the forearm and thigh, and a 16-year-old boy was shot in the arm. Their relatives said the injuries aren’t life-threatening.