PARK BYSTANDERS TRIED TO HELP
Women recount experience trying to provide aid after hearing shots that killed 1, injured 3 in Rogers Park
Kaitlyn Bisping and Madeline Oklesen were at their usual Sunday group gathering in the dog-friendly area at Pottawattomie Park when they heard popping sounds from behind the field house.
At first they thought it was fireworks, not uncommon in the area, but when Oklesen saw five to six people running from the scene, she realized the sounds were gunshots.
“Someone was screaming, ‘Call 911! Call 911!’” Oklesen, 38, said.
The rest of the group stayed back to watch the dogs, and another called 911 while Oklesen and Bisping ran toward the scene. A 19-year-old Minnesota woman was killed and three people, including the 19-year-old’s sister, were injured in the shooting Sunday.
When the pair arrived, a 19-year-old Chicago man who’d been shot in the leg was doing chest compressions on the 19-year-old woman, but Bisping said she wasn’t responsive. Oklesen and Bisping tried to find the bullet wound, at first thinking it was in the victim’s neck before realizing it was in her chest, “right where her heart was,” Oklesen said.
Bisping held a cloth over the bullet wound and stroked the victim’s hair while Oklesen checked the woman’s pulse and tried to comfort her. The victim’s older sister, 22, had been shot in the right foot and was also there. The victim started foaming from the mouth, so they flipped her onto her side to prevent choking.
“I just said, ‘Hang on, baby. Honey, they’re coming. Stay with us. Stay with us,’” Oklesen said.
Bisping and Oklesen waited with the victims until EMS personnel took over.
The 19-year-old was taken to Saint Francis Hospital where she was pronounced dead. The older sister was taken to Swedish Hospital in good condition. The 19-year-old man was also taken to Saint Francis Hospital in Evanston. A fourth victim, a 20-year-old Chicago man left the scene, according to police, but went to a nearby Chicago Fire Department station and was taken to the hospital for a graze wound to the head. All three were treated and released.
This was not the first time Bisping, 28, tried to stop the bleeding from a gunshot wound. About six months prior, Bisping was leaving her car in Rogers Park when she heard gunshots and saw a man run out of an alley screaming in pain. She wrapped her sweatshirt around the man’s wound on his leg until EMS arrived.
“I was hoping it was the sort of situation like that, but it was something a lot worse,” Bisping said. “There’s nothing that I could have done.”
Bisping, 28, considers her sister her best friend, so she empathized with the 22-yearold, who, along with being shot, also lost her sister in the attack.
“In the moment, I was just focused on her and hoping she was gonna make it,” Bisping said. “It didn’t really hit me until I finally got home and read one of the news articles that she didn’t make it, and so I obviously broke down.”
Oklesen said she’s still in shock from the incident, but that didn’t dull the anger it sparked.
“A young woman died, and I don’t even know her, but she didn’t deserve this. No one deserves this,” Oklesen said.
In a statement Sunday, Ald. Maria Hadden (49th) called the shooting “targeted.” Police said the suspects entered the park from Winchester Avenue and fired at the group before fleeing. No one was in custody.
Sunday saw another mass shooting in the city; hours later in Chatham on the South Side, three people, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed.