Police: Man, 51, shot dead near Morgan Park home

A 51-year-old man was shot and killed in the Morgan Park neighborhood early Thursday on the Far South Side, police said.

About 1:20 a.m., officers found the man lying on a sidewalk in the 1300 block of West 108th Place with gunshot wounds to the chest and back. He was dead at the scene, police said.

The Cook County medical examiner’s office did not immediately confirm the fatality.

An officer at the scene said the victim lived on the block where he was found dead, and a neighbor said the man was shot outside his house.

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 man who died 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.

Evidence markers at the scene of a fatal Far South Side shooting early Thursday. | Network Video Productions