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A 17-year-old girl has died after being shot in the back on Chicago’s West Side Sunday night.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the victim as Melissa Castrejon of the South Austin neighborhood.
The shooting occurred around 9:38 p.m. in the 1800-block of North Latrobe Avenue.
Police report that Castrejon was sitting inside a vehicle when a man known to her opened fire.
Paramedics rushed the teenager to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition.
Doctors later pronounced her dead from her injuries.
The suspect fled the scene and no one is currently in custody.
Investigators are searching for the gunman, though a specific motive has not yet been released.
Castrejon’s family is now pleading for justice and community support during their grieving process.
Her brother, Daniel, shared a heartbreaking message on a GoFundMe page created to help their mother.
“She had a whole life ahead of her, she was young full of life with intentions of going far in life and someone took that from her,” he wrote.
The loss has left the family in a state of shock and deep emotional pain.
“It’s leaving her family and myself in disbelief and broken in ways you can’t imagine,” Daniel stated.
He expressed the depth of the tragedy by adding, “I don’t wish what my family and I are experiencing on no one!”
Chicago police detectives are continuing to investigate the shooting as a homicide.
