9-year-old boy shot to death inside his home in Washington Heights

A 9-year-old boy was fatally shot Sunday night in Washington Heights on the South Side.

Jarvis Watts was shot while inside his home about 6:30 p.m. in the 9400 block of South Wallace Street, Chicago Police Department spokesman Tom Ahern said.

Watts was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office said.

An extended family lives inside the home, and there were multiple children and adults there when Watts was shot, police Cmdr. Sean Joyce told reporters outside the hospital.

Several adults were being questioned by detectives, Joyce said. It wasn’t immediately clear who the gun belonged to or how many gunshot wounds the boy suffered. The gun hasn’t been recovered, Joyce said.

Officers with flashlights combed through the home. The boy’s family embraced one another outside.

A woman who lives on the block said the street was usually quiet, so she was surprised to see so many police cars.

“We have a lot of older people that live on the block. All of us we look after each other, so it’s shocking,” said the woman, who asked not to be named. “We don’t normally see activity like this.”

The woman, who said she was born and raised on the South Side, said she’s familiar with the violence that’s been tied to the city for so long. But she’s not sure what can be done to stop it.

“You can only do so much, and there’s a lot of stuff that happens that you can’t control over time,” she said. “People are gonna do what they’re gonna do.

“Who would have thought that this was gonna happen on New Years Day?” she said.