Cesar Patino and his wife had called it a night after celebrating his nephew’s 20th birthday in the Logan Square neighborhood Sunday night.
As Patino, 72, walked to his car about 10 p.m., someone in a passing sport-utility vehicle opened fire, shooting him in the chest, police said. His wife, Rosa Gordillo, 76, was grabbing their jackets from the party at the time, and soon found him on the ground, bleeding. Patino died less than an hour later.
“He was four meters from his car when he was shot,’’ his son, Edison Patino, told the Sun-Times. “We don’t know exactly what happened.”
Relatives still at the celebration rushed to his wife’s side and tried to revive Cesar Patino after the attack, in the 3900 block of West Fullerton Avenue.
“They saw him struggling,” Edison Patino said.
The elder Patino, who was retired from a career in construction, grew up in Ecuador but had lived in Chicago for the last 40 years, his son said.
“It’s terrible,” he said. “I cannot even understand. He was just going to his car. Someone crazy shot him.”
Cesar Patino, of the 3300 block of West Wilson Avenue in the Albany Park neighborhood, was pronounced dead at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center at 10:44 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
He had at least 10 grandchildren and was a “very kind” husband, father and grandfather, his son said.
“All of us are very sad,” Edison Patino said. “All of us loved him. If anybody ever needed a favor he was always there for us.”
“He’s going to be missed a lot,” he added. “I don’t know why people do this, he was a happy person.”
No arrests have been made.
