Family and friend gathered outside their home to mourn the loss of a 16-year-old who was shot in the head and died early Sunday.
Joseph Briggs, 16, was killed by a gunshot wound to the head while he was standing on his front porch on the 6100 block of South Rockwell Street, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office.
"We'll get through it," Briggs's cousin Debra Freeman said standing a few feet away from where he was shot.
Briggs, a freshman at Gage Park high School, was standing with a group of people when someone driving a gray sedan fired shots and one of the bullets struck him, she said.
Police said Briggs was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn and listed in critical condition. Briggs was pronounced dead at 1:48 a.m. according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office.
The homicide is possibly gang related and the investigation is ongoing, according to News Affairs Officer Laura Kubiak.
The drive-by shooting took place about half a mile away from a gang-related shooting that wounded another teenager earlier Saturday afternoon.
At about 2:36 p.m., a 17-year-old boy was shot in the leg in the 2500 block of West 63rd Street, said police News Affairs Officer Daniel O’Brien.
Paramedics took the boy to Mount Sinai Hospital in “stable” condition, O’Brien said. A police source said early reports indicated the shooting stemmed from an “internal gang conflict.”
Area Central detectives are investigating the shootings.
