6-Year-Old Hit By Police Squad Car

A 6-year-old girl was struck by a police squad car that was responding to a shooting Saturday evening in the South Side Back of the Yards neighborhood.

At about 5 p.m., police were notified that a 30-year-old man was shot in the arm and the hand in the 5400 block of South Laflin Street, said police News Affairs Officer Daniel O’Brien, citing preliminary information.

Police said a person in the area flagged officers and told them the shots came from a blue Cadillac heading northbound on Laflin. The officers found the car and followed it east on West 52nd Street and then southbound on South Peoria Street, police said.

It was in the 5200 block of South Peoria Street that a squad car hit a 6-year-old girl, O’Brien said, adding that paramedics took the girl to the University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital for non-life-threatening injures.

At some point on South Peoria Street, the driver of the blue Cadillac bailed and a passenger got behind the wheel, police said. The car drove a block over to South Green Street, where the driver got out and fled on foot, police said, adding that a pistol was found in the car.

Police said they were searching for the two suspects Saturday evening.

The 30-year-old man injured in the shooting was taken to Holy Cross Hospital, where he was listed in fair condition.

Further details were not immediately available.