Wednesday turned out to be quite frightening for a Chicago man and his wife who were caught in them middle of a shootout in the city's Fulton River District.
The couple was driving down Milwaukee Avenue when the man, who wished to remain anonymous, screamed for his wife to get down and said his life flashed before his eyes.
“I couldn’t believe we’re in the middle of this,” he said. “I couldn’t believe that this was happening.”
He, his wife and several other innocent bystanders experienced the terrifying moments near Milwaukee Avenue and Des Plaines Street.
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“I looked at my wife. I said get down, get down, and I had to grab her, push her head down and get on top of her,” he said. “The only thing that flashed in my eyes right at that moment was my daughter that she needed at least one parent to raise her, and I needed my wife to be that person."
The man popped his head up seconds later and described what he saw next as something out of a movie.
“The gentleman was hanging out of the car with a handgun, but it had a giant magazine at the bottom, and he just started unloading into the car—pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, like automatically,” he described. “I saw the shell casings flying, they were hitting the ground.”
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The bullets hit several cars and four innocent people, including a Lyft passenger, a man on a Divvy bike and a woman at a dog park.
“When I looked down the street," he said. "I saw two and a half blocks, it was a like a war zone."
One of the bullets went through the taillight of the man's car as he and his wife ducked for cover.
“If that bullet would have continued through the light there’s a good chance it would have hit me in the shoulder or the head,” he said.
The man hopes something is done before another innocent person is shot or even killed.
“I’m just very thankful to be here,” he said. “But at some point it has to stop. I really call on the leadership of this city we elected to figure out to make it stop.”
As for the four innocent people shot, one was taken to the hospital in critical condition and three others were said to be in good condition. NBC 5 reached out to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office for a comment on the shooting and was still waiting on a response as of Thursday night.
