6-Month-Old Shot Five Times, Dies After Shooting in Chicago
A six-month-old died Tuesday morning, the day after she was the victim of a shooting in Chicago. The baby, Jonylah Watkins, was shot five times, reportedly while her father, the reported target of the shooting, changed her diaper in his mini-van in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood. The father, Jonathan Watkins, was also shot several times and was taken to a nearby hospital, where he remains in critical condition.
"I was trying to help. I was trying to help. I was trying to help her," Jonathan Watkins said in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times shortly after learning his 6-month-old daughter, Jonylah, died.
"They told me she didn't make it," Watkins said in a brief phone interview, his voice cracking with emotion.
Jonylah was rushed by paramedics to to Comer Children's hospital, where she died the next morning. According to Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, the shooter was "firing at the father, and exclusively at the father." He also added that, as of Tuesday, no witnesses had stepped forward. "We don't have one individual who's stepping up to help us," he said in press conference. "We don't have cooperating witnesses."
Chicago police say the gunman walked up to the mini-van and fired at Jonathan, and then fled in a waiting blue van. Police sources told the Chicago Sun-Times that the shooting was likely retaliation from a rival gang.
The Chicago-Sun Times also reports that this wasn't Jonylah's first run-in with gun violence; when her mother, Judy Watkins, was eight months pregnant with Jonylah, she was shot in the leg, just three blocks from the location of Monday's shooting.