Chicago shooting: 9-year-old girl shot in head, man also wounded in Chatham

CHICAGO (WLS) -- A 9-year-old girl was critically wounded in a shooting that also left a man hurt near the border of the Grand Crossing and Chatham neighborhoods on the South Side Thursday.

Chicago police said the girl was riding in the backseat of her mother's car as they were driving near East 79th and Maryland around 2:45 p.m. when the shooting happened. Police said they were not the intended targets.

The girl was struck in the back of the head. Chicago police rushed her to Comer Children's Hospital instead of waiting for paramedics to arrive. She remains in critical condition. Pastor Donovan Price spoke with the girl's mother at the hospital.

"She was driving and the car in front of her wouldn't go, and then when she stopped and tried to go around, all of a sudden shooting started and there was nothing she could do," he said. "It was so quick. And you know, when these type of things happening, it's your worst nightmare."

Surveillance video from a nearby gas station shows exactly what happened. A man jumps out of an idling white SUV and appears to go after someone on foot. Moments later, a silver sedan attempts to go around the SUV. It is then that a second man jumps out of the SUV and starts shooting in the direction of a man running down the sidewalk and the passing silver Hyundai. The girl was in the back seat of that sedan.

A second person, a man, was shot in the foot and was in good condition at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Police said he was not in the car at the time of the shooting, but was on the street.

No arrests have been reported.

CPD Superintendent David Brown the girl was caught in the middle of a gang-related shooting. She is at least the second child shot today in Chicago; overnight an 8-year-old was struck in in the arm, when police say bullets aimed at two women sitting on a porch in Roseland went into the home, hitting the girl.

The Sun-Times Media Wire contributed to this report.