‘It is a nightmare’ – sister says wounded woman was just driving to work

A 58-year-old woman shot in the arm early Sunday in Crest Hill was on her way to work and may not even have made eye contact with the gunman, her sister said.

“They’re saying ‘road rage’ but I don’t think they exchanged any words,” the sister said.

The Crest Hill police had labeled the shooting a “potential road rage incident.”

The wounded woman, a mother of three, drove herself from North Hickory Street between Rose and Elsie avenues to AMITA Health Saint Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, her sister and police said.

“My niece talked to her right after,” she said. “My niece said she drove herself to the hospital and called into work and said, ‘I can’t come in to work. I’ve been shot.’”

The sister said the woman was taken from St. Joe’s to Stroger Hospital in Chicago, where she underwent surgery Monday.

“Her radius was destroyed, and she will have pins and rods in her arm – along with many months of physical therapy,” the sister said in an email.

The wounded woman’s family has been unable to visit her at Stroger Hospital, the sister said.

“They won’t let us on because of [COVID-19],” she said. “They won’t even let her husband in.”

The woman was shot about 5 a.m., police said. Her sister said a car was stopped on Hickory Street and blocking traffic.

“He was parked in the middle of the street [and] when she pulled up behind him, he backed up into a parked car,” the sister said. “She assumed something was wrong with him and drove around, that is when he fired three or four times at her.”

The sister was at a loss as to why the seemingly senseless gun attack was carried out.

“It is a nightmare,” she said. “Who does this?”

The Crest Hill Police and the Joliet Police Department’s Special Operations Squad shut down the area around the crime scene for most of Sunday before obtaining a search warrant and entering a home on the same block as where the shooting occurred, Crest Hill Police Chief Ed Clark said.

Clark said police questioned witnesses and “those believed to potentially be involved” after the house was searched, but no arrests were made Sunday or Monday.

“They’re still working on it,” Clark said. “It’s still under investigation.”