Hidden tow truck driver shoots at passing gunman after bus accident in broad daylight: “In Chicago you go to work and don’t know if you’re going to get home.”
A covert tow truck driver fired back at a passing gunman after a bus crash in broad daylight in Chicago last week.
What are the details?
Chicago Police Department said WLS-TV The drive-by shooting happened around 2 p.m. Tuesday in the Archer Heights neighborhood. The station said it spoke with Lorenzo Hernandez, who was driving his SUV to work when he saw a crash involving a CTA bus and at least four other vehicles near West 47th Street and South Archer Avenue.
“I saw the bus accident when I was stopped at the light,” Hernandez told WLS through an interpreter.
Hernandez said more than a dozen people got off the bus and vehicles involved in the crash when someone in a white Dodge Durango shot at them, police said.
Police told WLS that one of the bullets hit a CTA bus conductor — a 55-year-old man — who was responding to the accident.
Hernandez added to the police station that a bullet hit his SUV and that his car’s engine blocked the bullet’s path just as it hit him.
Image source: WLS-TV video screenshot
Tow truck driver shoots back
A tow truck driver who was helping move the vehicles involved in the crash stood next to Hernandez’s SUV and fell to the ground amid the gunfire, WLS reported.
Hernandez believed the tow truck driver had been shot, but police said Hernandez soon saw the tow truck driver jump back up, run to the front of his SUV and fire two shots at the gunman.
The tow truck driver, who did not want to go on camera, told WLS he saw the gunman aim at him before returning fire with his own weapon.
Hernandez noted to the station that you never know what will happen in the next moment.
“The shooting happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to react,” Hernandez told WLS. “In Chicago you go to work and you don’t know if you’re going to come home. This happens everywhere. I thank God I didn’t get hit.”
Hernandez added to the station that the tow truck driver thanked him after the shooting: “He said if my SUV hadn’t been there, he would have been killed.”
Something else?
Police spoke with the tow truck driver, who was asked to stay behind as part of the investigation, WLS said, adding that police confirmed that a witness with a concealed carry license fired back.
Police told the station that the injured bus supervisor, who was hit in the thigh, was taken to a hospital and stabilized. The bus supervisor was not the shooter’s target, a CTA spokesperson told WLS.
No one is in custody and detectives are investigating, the station said.
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