4-year-old shooting victim now in fair condition

The 4-year-old South Side girl shot in the head Friday night in a drive-by shooting in West Englewood has been upgraded to fair condition, hospital officials said Monday.

Jacele Johnson, whose mother was about to move her family to Minneapolis to escape the violence in Chicago, was reported by her grandfather on Saturday night as “doing fine” a day after being shot in the head in a drive-by shooting outside a prom party.

She was initially hospitalized at University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital in critical condition, authorities said. She has been upgraded to fair condition as of Monday morning, a spokeswoman for the hospital said.

“She wakes up, and . . . she knows who’s in the room,” Marvin Gresham, little Jacele Johnson’s grandfather, told the Sun-Times on Saturday. “She looks at you, and she moves.

“We’re being told that she’s stable and her vitals are looking really good,” he said. “We’re just hoping for her to be all right.”

Jacele had no swelling in the brain, according to her aunt, Marcella Gresham, a good sign, but she remained at the University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital, where she underwent surgery.

Her family had been staying at her mother’s house on the South Side for about three months. She had just come back to Chicago from Minnesota and said she had signed a lease for a home in Minneapolis after her plans to open a salon and day care center in Chicago didn’t work out. The family was set to move Tuesday.