A 51-year-old man who was shot and killed in the Morgan Park neighborhood early Thursday on the Far South Side has been identified.
Officers found Paul J. King lying on a sidewalk in the 1300 block of West 108th Place about 1:20 a.m. with gunshot wounds to the chest and back, according to police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office. He was dead at the scene.
An officer at the scene said King lived on the block where he was found dead, and a neighbor said the man was shot outside his house. According to the medical examiner’s office, King lived a few blocks over, in the 1200 block of West 109th Street.
About an hour after authorities were called, detectives investigated with the 51-year-old’s body on the ground, covered with a bloodied white sheet.
The neighbor, who declined to give his name, said he was woken up by four to five gunshots and mistook them for knocks on his front door.
He didn’t know the victim very well but would wave to him almost every day.
“It’s crazy,” the neighbor said, who spoke outside the home he’s owned on the block for eight years. “You speak to someone one day, and then the next day you see him facedown in blood.”
He has been thinking about selling his house after recently paying it off. The shooting early Thursday made it a done deal, he said.
