State trooper shoots, wounds carjacking suspect in Chinatown

A state trooper shot and wounded a teenage boy who was inside a stolen vehicle Saturday night in Chinatown on the South Side, the Illinois State Police said.

The vehicle was reported stolen at gunpoint earlier in the day in Chicago, according to the state police, who said a trooper spotted and tried to pull it over on the Dan Ryan Expressway around 6:50 p.m.

But the driver sped off before getting caught in traffic at the northbound Chinatown ramp from the Dan Ryan at Cermak Road, the state police said.

They said troopers walked up to the stopped vehicle, and the driver tried to run one of them over, so one trooper, “fearing for his life,” fired into the vehicle.

The driver took off again, and troopers gave chase to 11th Street and Wabash Avenue, where four people jumped out, according to the state police, who said three of them were arrested there but the fourth temporarily got away.

The teenager later showed up at Stroger Hospital with multiple gunshot wounds, apparently not life-threatening, and was expected to be charged along with the others, the state police said.

They said investigators recovered two guns.

Omar Al-Marmari and Mohammed Al Abdul-Salim told WLS-ABC7 they were outside the Chinatown CTA Red Line station and saw part of what happened. They told the TV station they saw a black BMW sport-utility vehicle that was pulled by the state police and that troopers approached it, their guns drawn.

“I saw the driver raise his hand,” Al-Marmari told ABC7, “but then he just kept moving. He ran away.”

Both men said they saw a trooper fire at the SUV and shatter a window.

“I’m still shaking right now because I’ve never seen this,” Al Abdul-Salim told the station. “I’ve never witnessed such thing before. And I was panicking at the time.”

The Chinatown ramp was expected to remain closed into early Sunday as authorities investigate.