Gangbanger with Selfie Stick Records His Own Shooting

CHICAGO, IL — A 30-year-old man standing on the corner of 56th Street and South Hoyne on Chicago's South Side was smiling and jawing into a cell-phone video camera perched on a selfie stick when someone shot him down in the street last week.

The man, who's known as "Sugar Ray" and is said to be a convicted killer and documented gangbanger in his own right, is chattering on about the corner store when he catches sight of the shooter — you can glimpse the moment of recognition in his eye.

The camera tumbles to the ground and, facing up to the sky, records a gunman firing several rounds. After a few moments, a woman wails at the sight of the wounded fellow bleeding on the street.

"Oh my god, I don't believe this," she cries. "I don't believe this.

Yet this is literally the least unbelievable thing happening these days on Chicago streets.

He's reportedly in serious condition in a local hospital.

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This eye-on-the-ground point of view — posted to Facebook and YouTube and now watched more than half a million times — comes in the same week Chicago tapped a new interim police superintendent in Eddie Johnson. On Thursday, when this shooting went down, Johnson was in the newsroom of the Chicago Sun-Times talking about the bloodshed on city streets and what he might do to turn back the record-shattering, life-taking tide of violence.

Shootings are up 88 percent in the first three months of 2016, compared to last year, according to Chicago Police Department Data. That's 677 shootings — with 800 victims — through March 31, compared to 359 through the same time period last year.

The murder rate is up 72 percent, with 141 recorded through Thursday.

It's the most violent and deadly start to a year in Chicago in two decades.

That night, a 13-year-old boy who appeared in a public service video about neighborhood shootings and murders was critically wounded by a stray bullet. Zarriel Trotter was shot in the back.

"I don't want to live around my community where I've got to keep on hearing and hearing people keep on getting shot, people keep on getting killed," Trotter says in the video.

Now, the West Side boy is fighting for his life.

On Monday, the day Johnson was introduced to the public at the mayor's press conference, a bullet fired on the street grazed the head of a 7-year-old girl inside her own house.

Kids fall victim to the near-constant gunfire on Chicago streets every week. The stories, each tragic and senseless, no longer surprise, no longer shock.

Twenty-one more people were wounded in Chicago shootings this past weekend. Into the fray, Johnson must step. News cameras will be trained on him every week as the tally of shootings and body count grow.

What will he do, and when will we notice?

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