CHICAGO — As thousands gathered at Chicago’s Millennium Park Friday evening for the annual tree-lighting ceremony, social media posts advertising the latest and what would become perhaps the deadliest “teen takeover” continued to spread online.

In mere hours, the holiday cheer turned into chaos. A 14-year-old boy was killed and eight other teenagers were injured in a pair of shootings that Mayor Brandon Johnson called acts of “senseless violence.”

It has also led to renewed calls from aldermen to implement policies that deter similar large gatherings in the Loop. No suspects are in custody in either shooting.

“No parent wants to get that terrible, life-altering call,” Johnson said Saturday morning at an unrelated event on the West Side. “It is senseless violence like these shootings that makes us all feel unsafe, and it has left too many families in Chicago reeling.”

The first shooting happened just before 10 p.m. outside the Chicago Theatre in the 100 block of North State Street, according to Chicago police. An unidentified suspect walked away from a brawl that had broken out on the sidewalk, according to a police report. He then took out a gun and fired into a crowd of teenagers, wounding seven of them.

Officers on patrol heard the gunshots and saw a large group running. They later recovered three 9-mm casings from the scene of the shooting, the police report stated.

The victims, who ranged in age from 13 to 17 and came from all over the Chicago area, were transported to Lurie Children’s Hospital, Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Stroger Hospital in good and fair conditions. Some had graze wounds on their stomach and hips, while others had gunshot wounds on their legs.

Less than an hour later, officers also found two other teens with gunshot wounds lying in the street in the 100 block of South Dearborn Street. Video footage of the shooting shows several large crowds roaming the street before abruptly scattering, according to a police report. Police recovered three more 9-mm casings, one live round and a fired bullet from the area.

An 18-year-old man, who was shot in the leg, was taken to Northwestern in serious condition, police said. A 14-year-old boy was shot multiple times and was pronounced dead less than an hour later at the same hospital. His identity hadn’t been made public as of Saturday afternoon, and his family couldn’t be reached at their South Side home.

On Saturday, Johnson called the downtown violence a “setback” that was a reminder of “the long road that we have to build the city that we all want to live in.” He said there would be a “strong police presence” for the Wintrust Magnificent Mile Lights Festival set for Saturday evening.

Chicago crime has become a national issue as President Donald Trump has criticized urban crime and even attempted to take credit for recent dips in the crime rate as part of his Operation Midway Blitz immigration raids that have been winding down. This week, Johnson sought to head off concerns about public transit safety after a man was charged with setting a woman on fire on a CTA Blue Line train.

“Of course, (the Trump administration is) gonna continue to try to take credit for our positive work,” Johnson said, of decreases in the violent crime rate. “Our law enforcement has done a solid job working with all of our partners to bring down violence in the city of Chicago.”

The last shooting with such a high number of victims in the center of the city was at drill rapper Mello Buckzz’s album release party in the River North neighborhood in July. Four people were killed and 14 wounded in the drive-by rifle shooting.

A ‘teen takeover’ downtown

Sources said both Friday night shootings were connected to a “teen takeover” that had made the rounds on social media over the past few days. Police reports indicate that teens from as far away as Dolton and Evanston traveled downtown for the gathering after the tree-lighting ceremony. Some social media videos warned people to avoid the Loop due to the possible takeover.

Johnson said young people “need to understand that they should not attend these unauthorized events that have been advertised on social media” and called on parents to accompany their children at large events like the tree lighting. Police made 18 arrests, he said, and recovered five guns while responding to the shootings.

He said the city had sent a communication through Chicago Public Schools telling students not to participate in the gathering, and that 700 additional police officers were deployed downtown Friday night. (A CPD spokesperson declined to comment on the number of deployed officers in the Loop, citing operational security concerns.)

“But clearly, what we put in place did not do enough to prevent what we were concerned about from actually manifesting,” Johnson said.

Hundreds of young adults have attended what are now commonly called “teen takeovers” over the past few years in the city’s downtown neighborhoods. Notable gatherings in March, including one that ended with a 15-year-old boy sustaining a graze wound and another with a tourist being shot as she walked back to a hotel with her son, generated debate in the City Council and neighborhood groups alike over teen curfews.

Around that time, Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, revived his push for an 8 p.m. downtown curfew on unaccompanied minors, which is two hours earlier than the long-standing citywide 10 p.m. teen curfew.

Johnson tentatively pushed back on the effort, but the Streeterville alderman eventually got it passed by a City Council majority in June. It was set to give the police superintendent the authority to declare teen curfews anytime, anywhere, with little required notice.

But in July, Johnson issued a rare mayoral veto to block the ordinance. He derided the measure as “political theater,” and said instead that the city is “investing in people.” The mayor has sought to ramp up spending on programs like youth summer jobs and community violence intervention work. Chicago has seen sharp drops in homicides and shootings, both down around 30% compared with the same point last year.

“The easy thing to do would be to tell people that if we threaten young people and families with severe repercussions, that that somehow will make us safer,” Johnson said in July. “But we know from years of doing the same old tired forms of policy that it doesn’t get the results that people have longed for. It doesn’t keep us safe.”

Johnson did not address the curfew ordinance on Saturday, but Ald. Bill Conway, 34th, whose ward includes the location of the second shooting, told the Tribune that a curfew “would have been another tool that perhaps could have been useful.”

“Kids should obviously be able to go downtown without fear of being shot, and we need to make sure that police have the resources they need to fight and deter crime,” Conway said.

Ald. Brendan Reilly, whose 42nd Ward includes the Chicago Theatre, shared a more forceful call for the curfew power blocked by Johnson. It “sure would have come in handy” when hundreds of police on the scene noticed young crowds “acting up” before the first shooting, he said.

“It is incredibly disappointing the mayor decided to veto that ordinance based purely on ideology and politics,” he said.

Reilly said he fears the shooting could hurt businesses as downtown’s critical holiday retail season begins.

“We depend very heavily upon our sales tax, and so we need to make sure that people are confident that they’re going to be safe when they’re downtown during the holidays,” he said. “These headlines sting.”

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(Tribune reporter Cam’ron Hardy contributed reporting.)

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