Jaslyn Adams shooting: First grader shot 6 times, Chicago police investigating if father was target
CHICAGO – The 7-year-old girl killed Sunday afternoon while with her father in a McDonald’s drive-thru was a first grade student who attended a Chicago public school in Humboldt Park and Chicago detectives are investigating her fatal shooting as possibly targeting her father, according to police.
Jaslyn Adams, 7, was shot six times Sunday as she and her father waited in a drive-thru line at the McDonald’s, 3200 W. Roosevelt Road in the Homan Square neighborhood on the West Side, a preliminary police report states.
A responding police officer took the gravely injured child in a squad car and rushed her to Stroger Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 4:39 p.m. Her father, 29, with whom she had been in an Infiniti sedan in the drive-thru lane at the time of the shooting, was shot once in the lower back, the report states. He also was taken to Stroger in serious condition.
Forty-five spent shell casings — 28 from a handgun of one caliber and 17 from a handgun of another caliber — were found at the scene, according to the police report.
Investigators believe two people in a silver Audi approached from Kedzie Avenue and pulled up next to the Infiniti sedan Jaslyn Adams and her father were traveling in. A person got out of the front passenger seat and a second person got out of the rear passenger seat and both began shooting at the Infiniti, according to the report.
At some point during the barrage of gunfire, the Infiniti rolled forward and “crashed into the McDonalds intercom system in the drive-thru after being struck by multiple” bullets, the report said.
The gunmen then got back into the Audi, which sped off west on Roosevelt and south on Sawyer Avenue.
An officer from the Harrison police district who responded pulled the child from the Infiniti upon arrival, the report states.
It also said the 29-year-old she was with was Jaslyn’s father, who police indicated may have been the target of the shooting because of gang affiliation.
Investigators recovered private surveillance video as well as city surveillance video, according to the report. No description of the gunmen had been released as of Monday morning.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot was among those who commented on the shooting on social media. The mayor said she is “heartbroken and angered” by the fatal shooting, adding that it was an “unthinkable act of violence.”
The Chicago Teachers Union on Twitter posted about Jaslyn Adams twice Monday. One tweet noted that she had been a Cameron Elementary School student, and the second implored people to pray for “the entire school community.”
“We are crushed. Jaslyn was one of our students. Please keep her, her family and the Cameron Elementary community in your hearts,” another CTU tweet said.
Reached by phone Monday morning, Jaslyn’s mother declined to comment.
