The 19-year-old was shot while driving with friends on Wednesday night. He died Thursday.
"Oh, a lot of shots, looks like four or five right behind one another. I thought it was coming in the house," Annie Stewart, Maywood resident.
Stewart, 88, lives next door to the home that was hit by gunfire. Bullets also tore into a car carrying three people, including McCarty. McCarty, a three-sport stand-out athlete while at Proviso East High School, was home from college for the summer.
"It sounded like pow, pow, pow, real fast," Candace Jordan, Maywood resident, said.
McCarty's friends and former classmates gathered on the Maywood football field he once dominated. They held hands, said prayers, and paid tribute to the athlete.
"It ain't even been a year since he made it to see the real world. It's depressing you can't even go nowhere because people are getting killed every day for nonsense," LeDejia Harris, McCarty's friend, said.
McCarty just finished his first year at Dakota College, where he played football and basketball.
"Kind of a shock to us cause we're in rural North Dakota where this does not ever happen here," college football coach Tim Pfeifer said.
"From what I know he was in a car with a couple friends and they sprayed the car and just shot him. He just came home last week from school. Last week. He couldn't even see the summertime," Harris said.
Police say they're not sure if McCarty or his friends were the intended target. The 19-year old had never been in serious trouble before.
This is the second shooting in recent years outside Annie Stewart's house. She says she feels like a prisoner in the home she's lived in for 40 years.
"Now, you can't saying nothing to any of them because they'll come back and do something to you," Stewart said. She just stays in her house, she said. "That's what I do."
