Police say 1 dead, 1 injured in shooting outside apartment near Niles, Glenview

An 18-year-old father of a 4-month-old baby was killed and the child’s 18-yearold mother was seriously injured in a shooting outside an apartment building near Niles, police said.

The shooting occurred shortly before 4 p.m. Thursday in a parking lot next to the building in the 9600 block of North Greenwood Avenue, just south of Greenwood and Milwaukee Avenues in unincorporated Maine Township, Cook County Sheriff ’s Police said. The building is across the street from a CVS store in Niles, and is also close to Glenview.

According to police, an 18-year-old man and an 18-year-old woman had exited the three-story apartment building and gotten into a car in the parking lot to the south when they were approached by a gunman who fired into their car.

The gunman was described by police as wearing a black hooded sweatshirt with orange writing on the front, black pants, a black knit cap and a black face covering. He fled the scene in a tan Jeep Cherokee, police said.

The man was shot in the head and the woman suffered a gunshot wound to her arm, police said. Both were taken to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge where the man was pronounced dead, police said.

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office identified him as Erik Esquivel. He was a resident of the apartment building where the shooting occurred, the office said.

The medical examiner’s office on Friday ruled his death a homicide due to multiple gunshot wounds.

The female victim was listed in serious condition, according to police.

Greenwood Avenue was closed to traffic between Milwaukee and Golf Road late Thursday afternoon as police investigated the shooting. Yellow and red police tape stretched from Greenwood Avenue and Gregory Lane south to the end of the parking lot where the shooting took place, and police congregated around a burgundy sedan near the exit to the parking lot, its driver’s side door open. Several objects were strewn around the ground next to the vehicle.

Maine Township High School District 207 Spokesman Brett Clark said neither victim is a current or former student of the school district.

A woman who identified herself as the sister of the female victim said Esquivel and her sister were in a relationship and welcomed a daughter together in December. The woman, who did not want to give her name, said the victims had lived in the apartment for less than a year.

The baby was not with the couple when the shooting occurred, the woman said. Her sister, who had been behind the wheel of the car when the shooting happened, underwent surgery due to the injury she sustained in the shooting and was recovering, she said.

“She’s going to be OK,” the woman said.

Sitting next to a small memorial of religious candles and white balloons in the parking lot where the shooting occurred, the woman said she did not know who would have targeted her sister and her sister’s boyfriend.

“We left the city because of this (violence),” she said. “And it still followed us.”

She described Esquivel as “a good person.”

“He wanted to be a better person for his daughter,” she said.

Humberto Gonzalez, who said Esquivel was his nephew, also came to the parking lot memorial after he arrived from Minnesota to help support Esquivel’s family members. He said the shooting has “almost killed a part of everybody in the family.”

Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to contact the Cook County Sheriff ’s Police at 708-8654896.