Drive-by shooting kills 4 and wounds 14 others after a party at a Chicago restaurant

CHICAGO — The upbeat mood in a busy Chicago neighborhood known for its restaurants and nightlife quickly turned into horror late Wednesday as shots were fired at a crowd from a fast-moving vehicle, killing four people.

After the shots rang out, people who had attended an album release party for the rapper Mello Buckzz inside a nearby restaurant fell to the ground or screamed, witnesses said.

"I can only describe it as a war zone," Chicago pastor Donovan Price, who responds to communities and people in crisis, told The Associated Press. "Just mayhem and blood and screaming and confusion as people tried to find their friends and phones. It was a horrendous, tragic, dramatic scene."

Larry Snelling, Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, called the shooting a "cowardly act" at a Thursday news conference. He said the shooting was isolated to a location rented out for a specific event.

"In a matter of seconds, they were able to shoot 18 people, taking four lives," he said.

Police said the driver immediately fled and no one was in custody. He asked the public to submit anonymous tips to help detectives identify suspects.

Police said 13 women and five men, ranging in age from 21 to 32, were shot, and that the dead included two men and two women.

Snelling said police are trying to determine a motive and that the venue is closed "until we get to the bottom of this." Snelling did not give an exact number of shooters but said police found two different calibers of casings and are still reviewing footage from the shooting.

"Clearly, there was some target in some way," Snelling said. "This wasn't some random shooting."

The Cook County medical examiner's office identified two of the victims who died as Leon Andrew Henry, 25, and Devonte Terrell Williamson, 23. The two women who died had yet to be identified Thursday morning.

At least three people were critically injured, police said Thursday. Those shot were taken to hospitals.

Price said people in the crowd outside Artis Restaurant and Lounge in the city's River North neighborhood told him they had been at an album release party for a rapper. Videos on social media showed a red carpet outside and guests mingling and dancing inside.

Splattered blood and strewn belongings were still left on the sidewalk outside the restaurant Thursday afternoon.

The Black and LGBTQ-owned Creole restaurant, which opened in April, posted on Instagram that it was created as a safe space "where Black, Brown, Queer, and allied communities could gather, be celebrated, and feel at home in River North."

They said, "what happened last night disrupted it in the most painful way."

Mayor Brandon Johnson said the venue "was a safe space in particular for the LGBTQ+ community."

Mello Buckzz, a rapper from Chicago's East Side whose fanbase is largely women, was performing at the restaurant for her album release party. She asked for prayers and expressed her anger and sadness on social media.

"My heart broke into so many pieces," the artist said on Instagram hours after the shooting.

Video showed people waiting and crying outside of hospitals. Other images showed multiple police and ambulances at the scene of the shooting.

Price expressed sadness that the shooting took place outside of a local business aiming to make a difference in the community and just days after city-wide Pride month celebrations.

"Folks need places like that now," Price said. "It's a rough world."

A 2012 shooting at the same location left one man dead and three people injured, leading to the shutdown of Hush, the bar that had been there at the time.

The shooting took place days before the Fourth of July weekend, when Chicago and other major cities often see a surge in gun violence, despite overall decreases in gun violence in Chicago in recent years.

Last year, over 100 people were shot, including at least 19 deaths, during the holiday weekend.

Johnson said Thursday that "today is certainly a difficult day for our city," but assured residents that law enforcement agencies had plans to mitigate violence over the holiday weekend.

"We cannot allow that incident to define us as a city, and it doesn't define us as a city," Johnson said.

Contributing: Kathy McCormack

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