The 85th annual Bud Billiken Parade, which winds through Chicago’s south side, was supposed to be a day of celebration before students head back to school in a few weeks. Ordinarily, that’s exactly what it is.
Except this year, two teenagers, one 18 and the other 17, were shot and wounded near the parade, in the 4200 block of South Martin Luther King Drive, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Chicago Police said the shooting was reported at around 12:40 PM, causing several people to duck or run for cover.
The parade is an African-American as well as a back-to-school tradition. It is sponsored by Chicago Defender Charities.
“Me and my kids, we hit the ground,” the Chicago Tribune quoted Barbara Sims, whose family always watches the parade from the corner of South Martin Luther King Drive and 42nd Street, as saying. “My granddaughter was trampled,” she said, adding that another child hit his head on a pole while trying to run away.
“It’s a shame we must feel like that in our own neighborhood,” the paper quoted the father of an 8-year-old girl as saying. “It was right around my babies. It’s time for a change. I am tired of this.”
“You’ve got thousands of babies out here,” the Sun-Times quoted a 45-year-old woman as saying. “I’m disgusted. What are all these kids supposed to do? Just dive down to dodge bullets? This is a day the kids wait for—the Bud Billiken. We wait for the parade.”