A 14-year-old boy described by police as an innocent bystander was paralyzed from the chest down after being struck on a Chicago street by a stray bullet allegedly fired by a man who missed his intended target, according to court records.
The suspect, 19-year-old Muhammad Sayadul Boshar, was arrested and charged with one count of attempted murder, one count of aggravated battery and four counts of aggravated discharge of a firearm at an occupied vehicle, police said.
Boshar, of Chicago, was allegedly shooting at a car occupied by a former soccer teammate, but a stray bullet ended up hitting the boy instead, according to court documents filed by the Cook County State’s Attorney and reviewed on Thursday by ABC News.
Muhammad Sayadul Boshar, 19, pictured in this jail booking photo.
Chicago Police Department
The victim, whose name was not immediately released, was struck in the back by one of five or six shots fired in the incident, according to the court papers. The bullet lodged in the victim’s spine, court documents said.
“He is paralyzed from the chest down,” prosecutors said in the complaint, adding that the boy is in stable but serious condition at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago.
The shooting unfolded on Friday afternoon in the West Ridge neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side, police noted.
Boshar, according to court documents, allegedly spotted his intended target earlier in the day after the 24-year-old man had just finished praying at a mosque. The man told police he and Boshar began aggressively yelling at him and brandished a handgun, according to the court records.
The man told police that he and Boshar used to play on the same soccer team when they were younger, but denied knowing why the suspect was angry at him, the court papers state.
The man said he ran into a restaurant to escape Boshar, who left the scene, according to the court papers. The man alleged that he subsequently received several threatening phone calls and Facebook Messenger texts from Boshar, the documents said.
Just before 3 p.m. on Friday, the man told police he was a passenger in a car with two friends, including one who had his 3-year-old son in the rear passenger seat, when they drove by Boshar’s West Ridge home and saw him standing outside, according to the court documents.
When Boshar spotted him in the car, the man told police that Boshar produced a handgun and fired at the vehicle, according to the court records.
The boy who was paralyzed was about a block and a half from where the shooting erupted and was unlocking a Lime scooter when the stray bullet hit him, according to the court documents.
Witnesses told ABC Chicago station WLS that the boy was with classmates when he was shot and that his mother immediately called to the scene.
“I saw his mom and how his mother was literally broken down when she saw her son lying down on the floor,” witness Mohammad-Rafiq Mohammad Yesin told WLS.
Investigators have been combing through surveillance video that captured part of the shooting, according to the court records.
After a brief manhunt, Boshar was taken into custody, police said.
Boshar made his initial court appearance on Monday. His next court date is set for Friday, according to the Cook County State’s Attorney.
Boshar has not entered a plea to the charges. It was unclear on Thursday if he has hired an attorney.
Leave a Reply