Member of U.S. Navy critically wounded, 3-year-old daughter grazed in the head in Chatham: ‘Something’s really wrong’

A member of the U.S. Navy was critically wounded and his 3-year-old daughter was grazed in the head during an apparent carjacking attempt in Chatham Thursday night, according to police and family members.

Koreyuntaye Robinson and his daughter Kori were sitting in a parked car in the first block of East 79th Street when a car pulled up around 7:20 p.m. and someone inside fired shots, Chicago police said. Robinson drove away but crashed into a parked car in the 300 block of East 79th Street.

Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times

Robinson was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in critical condition. His daughter was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital in good condition with a graze wound to the head.

“To see my granddaughter’s head wrapped and blood running out of it is what took my soul and I fell to my knees because you all are out here and you’re harming women and children over nothing,” said Shenell Griffin, Robinson’s mother.

“To shoot in that car, you know kids [are] in there, you have to be a demonic soul, she added. “Something’s really wrong.”

Griffin said she was coming home from nursing school when she learned her son and granddaughter had been wounded and rushed to the scene. She later joined about a dozen family and friends outside the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Robinson is a member of the U.S. Navy who lives in Virginia, Griffin said. He and his daughter were in town visiting family when they were apparently targeted by carjackers who opened fire.

Griffin noted that two of her son’s friends have been killed in recent days, including 29-year-old Derricka Patrick, a pregnant woman shot to death Wednesday. Now, after spending 49 years in Chicago, she said the steady drumbeat of violence is finally pushing her out.

“This is the worst I have ever seen it,” she said. “I cannot breathe here another day. I have to go, and my kids have to go.”

Griffin’s uncle, David Griffin, said Robinson graduated with honors from Dunbar Vocational Career Academy, where he was a standout basketball player. In addition to serving in the military, David Griffin said Robinson is a businessman who ran a moving and storage business.

“The boy is positive,” said David Griffin, who believes he was likely trying to protect his daughter.

“These dummies are jacking cars. And even though you got babies in the car, they pull off with your baby,” he added. “That’s probably why he tried to get away.”

(An earlier version of this story quoted police as saying the girl was not injured. But fire officials later corrected that information and said she was grazed in the head.)

Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times