A 9-year-old Chicago boy was killed in a drive-by shooting while playing outdoors with other children during his grandmother’s birthday celebration, police said.
Ulysses Campos was attending the 70th birthday party in the Chicago suburb of Franklin Park Saturday night when a gunman fired a volley of four to six shots from inside a moving car in a nearby alley, according to the local police.
The grader-schooler was the only person who was struck by the gunfire, reported the news channel WLS.
Campos was taken to Loyola Hospital, where he later died from a gunshot wound to the chest, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Franklin Park police said that a person of interest in the deadly drive-by shooting was in custody. They have not been publicly identified as of Monday.
A car associated with the crime was later recovered in Leyden Township.
Cops described the boy’s shooting as an isolated incident and said that there was no threat to the general public.
It was not immediately clear whether the 9-year-old Campos was the intended target of the shooting.
A makeshift memorial made up of balloons, candles and flowers has been growing near the scene of the tragedy.
Campos’s devastated family members said that he loved Batman and playing video games. He would have turned 10 years in just two weeks.
A relative who started a GoFundMe fundraiser described Campos — lovingly nicknamed “Uly Bear — as “a kindhearted, loving kid” who was “always full of excitement.”
