By Ryan Haggerty and Jeremy GornerTribune reporters
7:11 a.m. CDT, April 7, 2011
Kiara Faniel knows she’s lucky.
The 14-year-old freshman softball player at Morgan Park High School was shot in the right leg after a game Tuesday on the Far South Side.
“It could’ve been a lot worse,” Faniel said Wednesday while sitting on the front porch of her Far South Side home with her leg wrapped in a thick bandage and her 5-year-old niece at her side.
Faniel, a right fielder and shortstop on Morgan Park’s “frosh/soph” team, said she was shot just after 6 p.m. while she and her teammates celebrated with members of the varsity team after watching them beat Chicago International Charter School–Longwood in Oakdale Park.
Faniel said that just before the shooting, a man in the bleachers who had been heckling the Morgan Park team throughout the game shouted out his disappointment over Longwood’s loss as its players were leaving the park, in the 900 block of West 95th Street.
Moments later, while Faniel’s back was turned to the man, she and her teammates heard gunshots and dived to the ground as their coach yelled at them to get down. Several of Faniel’s teammates then saw the man running from the field, she said.
Faniel said she felt a burning sensation in her right leg while lying on the ground but didn’t realize she had been shot until a few minutes later when she saw blood seeping through her softball pants as she rode the team bus back to Morgan Park.
“I didn’t want to panic,” Faniel said. “I just knew my leg was hurting bad.”
Faniel’s mother met her at the high school and took her to MetroSouth Medical Center in Blue Island, where she was treated and released. Faniel said the bullet fell to the floor in the hospital while doctors examined the through-and-through wound.
Chicago police said no arrests have been made in the shooting.
Robert Lang, director of schools at Longwood, said school officials do not believe the shooter has ties to Longwood. Lang was not at the game, but he said coaches and other staff who were there said the game was a normal, uneventful contest and that the shooting “came out of the blue.”
Police said the shooting occurred while Morgan Park players were celebrating their win.
Faniel said she and her teammates engaged in their customary post-victory ritual -- trading high-fives with the opposing team then taking part in celebratory chants.
“We weren’t saying anything bad about the other team,” she said. The shots rang out while the team was packing up its gear after they had finished their chants, she said.
Faniel said she was peppered with questions about the shooting while she limped through classes Wednesday. She wore her green Morgan Park softball sweatshirt to school, her last name and the number 13 printed in orange on the back.
Faniel said teachers and friends went out of their way to support her, but she said her emotions ranged from fear to shock as the day went on.
“I was just thinking, ‘Why me? You shot somebody over a softball game?’” she said. “If I would’ve jumped or something, I probably could have gotten hit somewhere other than my leg.”
Faniel’s mother, Corinthia, said her daughter earns A's and B's in school and stays busy playing softball and helping instruct students at her former elementary school in cheerleading and jumping rope. She expressed shock over the shooting.
“It was a game,” the mother said. “There's going to be winners and losers. But you shoot into a crowd of children? What are you thinking?”