Chicago police fatally shot a man inside the brick bungalow known as the boyhood home of Bulls star Derrick Rose early Sunday morning.
Police said they shot and killed a man who fired at officers responding to several calls of a man with a gun and a home invasion in the 7300 block of South Paulina Street in the West Englewood neighborhood around 4:40 a.m.
“Responding officers were met by an armed offender and shots were exchanged,” a Police Department statement said. “The offender was fatally wounded and a weapon was recovered. There were no injuries to officers.”
The man was pronounced dead inside the home, according to Larry Merritt, a spokesman for the Independent Police Review Authority, which investigates all police shootings. The man was identified as Charles M. Smith, 29, of the 2100 block of West 77th Street, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
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The police officer involved will be taken off the street and shifted to mandatory administrative duty for 30 days under a new policy that interim police Superintendent John Escalante put in place in December, according to Chicago Police Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.
Carol Gyimatey, 48, who lives next door, said she has lived all her life in the neighborhood, where shootings and crime have become commonplace.
“There are always shootings over here,” she said. “It’s sad, but it’s common. … You don’t want to leave Chicago because that’s all you know. But pretty soon you won’t have any choice.”
A few other residents on the block — a mix of well-kept homes, boarded-up houses and vacant lots — said there have been concerns about a recent string of home break-ins.
But neighbors who live near the house where the shooting occurred said they have heard arguing there recently. One neighbor believed the man who was killed in the shooting may have been the boyfriend of a woman who lived at the home.
Donald Davis, who has lived in the neighborhood for about seven years, lamented the violence.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Davis said. “Crime needs to be stopped.”
At Murray Park one block from the scene — where Rose contributed money five years ago to restore the basketball court — a faded, peeling sticker on the backboard reads, “The Derrick Rose Restoration Project,” while another sticker on the pole urged people to “think before you shoot.”