'I'll never forget her screams': Witness describes how she tried to save 8-year-old Chicago shooting victim's life

Liz Nagy Image
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Vigil held for 8-year-old girl killed in Chicago shooting
The Canaryville neighborhood came to mourn the indiscriminate murder of an innocent child Wednesday night.

CHICAGO (WLS) -- A Chicago community came together Wednesday night to demand justice for an 8-year-old girl who was killed in a shooting.

Dajore Wilson was shot while sitting in a car with family members in the Canaryville neighborhood on the city's South Side Monday night.

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Loved ones of another little girl, the latest victim of the city's raging gun violence, now know the pain of losing a child in an instant.

Witness Shana Lamb said what happened that night will haunt her forever.

"I'll never forget her screams," Lamb said, holding back tears. "It was the most terrifying thing I've ever done in my life, that's for sure."

Police said Dajore Wilson was riding in a black Subaru SUV with her parents when it pulled up to the intersection at Union and 47th Street. Security video shows a Dodge Charger pulling up behind it. Police say a passenger got out of the Charger and fired several times into the Subaru.

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ABC7 obtained security camera footage that shows how the shooting that killed an 8-year-old girl on Chicago's South Side went down.

"It appears that people from this vehicle were definitely targeting someone in that car, or someone they thought should have been in that car," said Brendan Deenihan, chief of detectives for the Chicago Police Department.

The car crashed into a tree, where Lamb gave the 8-year-old girl CPR.

"When I came back out, the mother was pulling the baby out of the car. It took me a minute to realize it was a baby," Lamb said. "I just started to scream, 'Start CPR! Start CPR!'"

As the certified nurse assistant scrambled to try and save the 8-year-old girl's life, police say the gunman in the charger sped off. Lamb said she never saw them.

"I kept talking to the little girl, telling her to listen to her mom's voice and hoping that she would hang on for her mom," she said.

In that moment, all that mattered was saving the little girl's life. Her mom, the only one inside the vehicle who was not shot, clung to her daughter the entire time.

"She was screaming. She was screaming and crying and screaming, 'Please help my baby!'" Lamb said. "She was holding her hand the whole time. She never let go of her baby's hand. She never let go of her baby."

On Wednesday night, the Canaryville neighborhood came to mourn the indiscriminate murder of an innocent child.

"My cousin loved this girl," said David Wilson, a cousin of the victim's father. "This was his best friend. Dajore was his everything. Y'all took his everything from him. My cousin is ready to die today."

Complete strangers showed up to show Dajore Wilson's family that her young life mattered.

"We all need to start loving each other a little bit more, looking out," one of them said.

"These are babies, you know?" Lamb said, choking up. "She was so beautiful and she deserved to live a life. She deserved to have a life."

Police are asking the community to help track down the black Dodge Charger and the alleged murderers in it.

Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to report it anonymously to police at CPDTip.com.