A man arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of a New City teenager has been released without charges, police said, leaving a grieving family “very upset” and wondering how his walk to school turned fatal. Two others were also wounded in the shooting. police said.
Pedro Ramírez, 17, was shot on the 1300 block of West 51st Street early Tuesday morning as he walked to Tilden High School, where he was finishing his junior year, according to his mom and authorities.
“I’m really focused on trying to get answers to what’s going on,” the boy’s mother, Eloisa García, told the Tribune Thursday, adding he’d made the honor roll. “He was an innocent bystander.”
Police arrested a man who had fled the scene Tuesday morning. According to a police source, prosecutors reviewing the case against the man in custody said there wasn’t enough information to charge him and referred the case back to law enforcement. The Cook County state’s attorney’s office doesn’t comment on pending cases.
García said she is “very, very disappointed” to hear that charges had not yet been filed and said she would start pushing for answers once they had finished making arrangements for her son’s Ramirez’s funeral, which is planned for Saturday.
With the school year coming to an end next week, García said her son had been looking forward to helping out on a remodeling project. He’d also recently obtained a food service license from the city, she added, and talked about studying electrical engineering and playing volleyball in college.
“We had so many plans for him,” she said. “So many things we’re not going to have anymore.”
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According to a police report obtained by the Tribune, the two other victims were driving south on Throop Street in a red minivan near West 50th Street when a black Jeep drove up. A person got out of the Jeep and started firing a long gun, witnesses told police. It’s not clear from the report whether the shooters were targeting the two men in the minivan, but both realized they had been shot as they drove away.
The 61-year-old was shot in the back and the 55-year-old was shot in his right arm. Both men were taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition, police said.
Ramírez was shot in the armpit and taken to Comer Children’s Hospital in critical condition, where he later died, police said.
Police got two calls about a black Jeep traveling westbound on 49th Street shortly after the shooting, according to the report. Near the intersection of 44th Street and South Wolcott Avenue, officers saw four people in masks get out of a black Jeep — later found to be reported stolen — and run away, leaving a black rifle near the car.
Deering (9th) District police found several spent rifle casings near the intersection of 50th and Throop streets, the report stated.
García, 39, said her son typically walked to school when the weather was nice. He was not involved in whatever prompted the triple shooting, she said.
“I would understand if he had a friend who was a gang member, (but) he was walking to school like a normal kid on a nice day,” she said.
All of Ramírez’s friends were from his volleyball and soccer teams, she said. They have been coming by the house in the days since the fatal shooting, and each one told his parents that Ramírez had been their best friend.
She’d asked him the other week about whether kids at Tilden were bullied, and been surprised when he said no. Then he thought and revised his answer, she recalled: There had been one student. When García asked what had changed, she said her son replied: “I became his friend, and then he wasn’t bullied anymore.”
Family friend Marleni Curiel, who has set up a GoFundMe on behalf of Ramírez’s family, told the Tribune one of her last memories with Ramírez was celebrating Mother’s Day together earlier this month. She recalled him asking his grandmother to dance. It was a beautiful moment, Curiel said, that perfectly reflected the kind of person he was: respectful, hardworking, thoughtful and always helping others.
Curiel recalled watching Ramírez helping his mom decorate for Christmas countless times, taking care of and spending time with his younger sister and always treating everyone around him with kindness. Every time she visited, Curiel said Ramírez would greet her with a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
Ramírez “truly was a bright soul with a good heart,” Curiel said, adding that he deserves to be remembered as someone who was loved by his community and family.
The shooting that killed Ramírez is the third multivictim shooting to occur over the last several weeks in the Deering District, which includes Back of the Yards and New City.
Police crime statistics updated through Saturday show that the district has so far this year seen a 125% increase in homicides and a 25% increase in aggravated batteries, which includes nonfatal shootings, compared with the same time frame in 2025. The Wentworth Area, or Area 1, which covers the city’s South and Southwest sides north of 75th Street, has seen a 53% increase in homicides year to date.