A seven-year-old girl was killed Sunday during a shooting outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Chicago, police said.
The girl, Jaylsn Adams, and her 28-year-old father, Jontae Adams, were in a car just after 4 p.m. at the McDonald’s on the city’s west side when two men got out of another car and began shooting at them, according to authorities.
Lawanda McMullen, Jontae Adams’s mother, told the Chicago Sun-Times her son frantically called her moments after being shot.
“He said, ‘Ma, come get me. They just shot my baby,’” McMullen said.
The child was shot several times during the attack, police said, and was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. Adams was also shot more than once and was listed as in serious condition as of Monday, the newspaper reported.
Police believe the incident is gang-related and connected to a second shooting at a Popeyes restaurant in Humboldt Park just hours later.
There, a 33-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman were in a blue Chevy Malibu when they were shot and injured while sitting in a drive thru, the Sun-Times reported.
“Unbelievable, they did this in front of all those cameras,” one man who asked to remain anonymous told the newspaper of the scene at the McDonald’s. “These kids are getting bold.”
Chicago has seen a sharp spike in shootings and murders in recent years, a trend McMullen said has gotten out of control.
“Put the guns down,” she said. “Our kids want to play; my kids can’t even go out the door because of [the violence.] Please put the guns down, please. My 8-year-old baby says she don’t even want to go outside to play because she’s scared she’s going to get shot. This has gotta stop.”