CHICAGO — Nine teenagers were shot, one fatally, in a pair of shootings less than an hour apart on Friday night in Chicago’s Loop, according to Chicago police.

Officers from the city’s Central (1st) district were on patrol around 9:50 p.m. at 164 N. State St., just outside the Chicago Theatre, when they heard gunshots and saw a large group running away, police said.

On Saturday morning, police reported that seven teenagers were wounded in the shooting, all of whom were in good or fair condition.

A few blocks south of the theater, a second shooting at 140 S. Dearborn St. around 10:40 p.m. left a 14-year-old boy dead and an 18-year-old man in serious condition with a gunshot wound to the leg. The dead teen’s identity wasn’t yet public on Saturday morning. A preliminary internal police notification indicated the teen was 17, but Mayor Brandon Johnson later corrected the victim’s age to 14.

“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.”

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 Magnificent Mile Lights Festival set for Saturday evening.

The shootings occurred following a week of higher-profile crimes in Chicago, even as violent crime has decreased in the city for the past several years. Earlier 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. Chicago crime has also become a national issue as President Donald Trump has criticized city crime and the Trump administration even attempted to take credit for recent dips in crime as part of its Operation Midway Blitz immigration raids that have been winding down.

“Of course they’re gonna continue to try to take credit for our positive work,” Johnson said. “Our law enforcement has done a solid job working with all of our partners to bring down violence in the city of Chicago.”

In the shooting outside the Chicago Theatre, those shot included: a 14-year-old boy who suffered a wound to the stomach and was in good condition at Lurie Children’s Hospital; a 14-year-old boy who was shot in the right hip and was in good condition at Lurie; a 15-year-old who suffered a graze wound to the left thigh and was in good condition at Stroger Hospital; a 17-year-old boy who suffered a graze wound to the left thigh and was in good condition at Stroger; a 16-year-old boy who was shot in the leg and was in good condition at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Two more teens, a girl and a boy, 14 and 13, were also taken to Lurie, where they were listed in good and fair condition with wounds to the legs, police said.

Police sources said both shootings were connected to a “teen takeover” that had made the rounds on social media over a few days. Crowds had been in the downtown area earlier Friday evening for the annual tree lighting ceremony, and numerous videos spread widely on social media warned people to avoid the Loop due to a possible takeover. Several TikTok clips liked by thousands were posted by teens who invited others downtown. Other viral videos warned Chicagoans to stay away from the tree lighting to avoid chaos.

“I have gotten several calls telling me, ‘Do not go to the Millennium Park tree lighting tonight because there is going to be all types of hell raised,’” TikTok user Boaz Space said in one video posted Friday morning. “Tonight, it is going down, and you do not want to be anywhere around when it is going down.”

Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, whose downtown ward borders are close to both shooting locations, said city officials had at least a two-day notice of the plans for the large teen gathering and a day’s forewarning that the event “was really starting to gain traction.” The concerns were strong enough to lead Chicago Public Schools officials to warn some families of potential violence and urge them to keep children away from downtown, he said.

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 and gatherings 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.

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

Hopkins posted on social media around 10:50 p.m. that 300 youths were “rioting” downtown, but didn’t specify a location. Hopkins also said that at least one police officer had been hospitalized and others had been injured while responding to the scene. City Hall staff could not verify that an officer had been hospitalized on Saturday morning.

It was the first shooting with that number of victims in the center of the city in a number of months.

Earlier this year, 14 people were wounded and 4 were killed in a drive-by rifle shooting at drill rapper Mello Buckzz’s album release party in the River North neighborhood. Authorities are still investigating that shooting, which was among the city’s worst in recent years, even as violent crimes have dropped sharply.

No one is in custody for either shooting, police said, and Belmont Area detectives were investigating.

Shootings similar to the one that occurred Friday night involving crowds of young people have repeatedly grabbed headlines and sparked an ongoing debate between Johnson and some City Council members over teen curfews.

Hopkins revived his push for an 8 p.m. downtown curfew on unaccompanied minors — two hours earlier than the longstanding citywide 10 p.m. teen curfew — after a pair of March shootings involving young crowds left a tourist mother and a 15-year-old boy wounded.

Johnson tentatively pushed back on the effort as Hopkins pressed ahead, but the Streeterville alderman revised the ordinance and ultimately won the support of a City Council majority.

The proposal, which aldermen finally passed in June with a 27-22 vote, was set to give Chicago’s police superintendent power 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.”

On Saturday, Hopkins said the Loop shootings on Friday night were “a textbook example of how the curfew could have been used effectively.”

“Had the curfew been in place, it’s likely that the event would not have spiraled out of control and resulted in gunfire and loss of life,” he said.

Hopkins said police detained 18 people for curfew violations Friday night, but could only intercede after 10 p.m. to target “some of the more aggressive troublemakers.” Johnson should reconsider the curfew ordinance, a “very sensible public safety tool that would only be used appropriately to prevent bloodshed among young people,” he said.

“We can’t just not respond to this,” Hopkins said. “I can’t allow political differences to derail it. I think we are obligated to see if there’s some modification to the plan that would gain the additional support we would need from the mayor so he won’t veto it again.”

Johnson on Saturday did not address the curfew ordinance. But earlier this year, he defended his decision to veto the ordinance.

“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,” he 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.”

Instead, the city is “investing in people,” Johnson said at the time. 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 murders and shootings, both down around 30% compared with the same point last year.

“The work is working,” Johnson said then.

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