After a 3-year-old girl was shot Wednesday afternoon in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, responding officers had a narrow window to act. Should they take the child and her father — believed to be the intended target — to the hospital themselves, or wait for an ambulance?
Their decision, to immediately rush the girl, who was shot in both legs, to Comer Children’s Hospital was one any officer would likely have made, said Officer Luis Saldana, one of four police officers who sped the pair to the hospital in a police squad vehicle.
“We wanted her to survive,” said Saldana, speaking at a Thursday afternoon news conference at the Chicago Police Department’s Deering District station. “I don’t want anyone to lose their child.”
A father himself, Saldana said he was thinking of his own family as he and Officer Luke Rosner applied pressure to each of the young girl’s leg wounds as they rode in the vehicle’s back seat. She cried just once during the four- or five-minute ride, when she noticed the blood, said Saldana, who has been a Chicago police officer for 16 years. Otherwise she was calm, officers at the news conference said, and likely in shock.
“It all happened very fast. … She was pale, very pale,” Rosner said.
Although the police would not comment on the criminal investigation at Thursday’s news conference, investigators are still looking for the gunman in Wednesday’s incident, which took place just before 3 p.m. The girl and her father, 34, were in the 1900 block of West 48th Street when a person walked up and fired, police said. The man ran off and possibly got into a black sedan nearby.
Saldana and Rosner, with the girl’s father in the front seat, were driven by Officer Kevin Lombard and joined by Officer Craig Coughlin. They raced the girl to Comer Children’s Hospital. Her father also was wounded.
Both were later stabilized. It was not known on Thursday whether the girl would be able to use her legs again, though she had been undergoing surgery, officers said.
MORE COVERAGE: