Woman suffers serious eye injury after being struck by random paintball in Chicago
By Jermont Terry
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CHICAGO, Illinois (WBBM) — Police on Wednesday were looking for the suspect or suspects who were caught on video shooting paintballs at people across Chicagoland.
Families are also looking for justice after the prank gone wrong.
Video taken Halloween night shows a group shooting paintballs at random people from inside a car. The videos were recorded and posted online from the same Southwest Side area where Adrean Murillo’s sister was injured.
“It’s really bad what they did to her,” Murillo said.
His sister, Vicky, ended up bleeding on the ground in the Garfield Ridge neighborhood.
“She was shot in the body I believe twice—on the face one time, which went and hit the eye,” Murillo said.
Paramedics rushed Vicky by ambulance to the hospital after the paintball pierced her eye.
“She had emergency surgery because she had an eye globe rupture,” Murillo said. “At the moment, she doesn’t have any vision.”
This was all because someone thought it would be cool to shoot people with paintballs while taking video. Murillo said the fact that the paintball assailants were recording everything says something about their intent.
“It was malicious. They knew what they were doing,” he said. “I mean, they went out that day specifically for that reason.”
Murillo posted online about his sister’s incident, and quickly learned the guys behind the paintball attacks were busy for a few days before his sister’s attack.
“It’s the same car same color, same everything,” said Murillo. “That means this individual has been in this area for some time now.”
It turns out the family learned the paintball attacks spilled over into nearby suburbs too.
“I got reached out by a detective in Cicero, and I got reached out to by the police department in North Riverside, and both of them said that, ‘Hey, we’re going to loop in your case with ours—same vehicle same color,'” said Murillo.
Yet Vicky was the only one seriously injured. Her family started a GoFundMe because her medical bills are mounting as they wait to see if her vision will return.
“It’s all wait-and-see,” said Murillo. “She has I don’t know how many procedures lined up down the road—one being this Friday. So we’re just trying to stay as optimistic as we could.”
The family is just as optimistic that police will find the people who thought such attacks were funny.
“We want it charged a high as we can get it, because if not, it’s going to be a slap on the wrist,” said Murillo.
Yet Vicky’s life is forever altered.
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