Two reputed gang members were shot this afternoon at a funeral for a man who was slain on the South Side last week, with a minister at the services tweeting afterward, "This is Crazy."
The two men were shot outside St. Columbanus Church in the 300 block of East 71st Street shortly before 12:30 p.m., across the street from the A.A. Rayner & Sons Funeral Home, police said.
They were taken in critical condition to Stroger, according to Chicago Fire Department spokesman Will Knight. Both victims are convicted felons and known gang members, police said. Two guns were recovered at the scene.
The shooting occurred after the funeral for James Holman, 32, who was gunned down last week at an apartment building in the Washington Park neighborhood, according to police and the minister who was presiding, the Rev. Corey Brooks.
"I just preached a funeral and gunfire has broke out," Brooks tweeted. "Chaos about 500 people here. This is Crazy!!
"Please pray for Chicago," he added in a later tweet. "This is horrible."
Please pray I believe people have been hit it is Chaos about 500 people here. This is Crazy!!
— Corey Brooks (@CoreyBBrooks) November 26, 2012
Brooks said later, in an interview with the Tribune, that about 500 people attended the funeral, including about 50 children. The church was so crowded, people were standing in the back.
Brooks had finished the eulogy and the man's family and close friends had gone out the front door of the church when shots rang out.
"That's when all the gunfire broke out and it was just crazy," said Brooks. "People were hollering and screaming and kids running everywhere. By the time we got back around to the front, you got these guys who have been shot."
Brooks said he usually accompanies families out of the church after funerals, but had left by a side door for a radio interview.
"I do know that the shooters were at that funeral," he said. "From what everyone is saying, those guys came out of the funeral and waited."
He said a witness told him one of the men raised his hand as he was shot. "One of the guy's whole hand got shot off because he raised his hand to stop the shot and it shot his hand off," Brooks said.
Brooks believes the men who were shot were targeted. "It's not a random [shooting], you can mark that one off. If someone shoots at a funeral and somebody gets hit, more than one, it's direct, it's specific. . .This is more a hit: These are guys that I want and I want to get them. So it was a target."
Police said Holman was a gang member, but Brooks said he wasn't sure.
"I don't think that he was but I don't know for sure," he said. "No one told me that he was, and normally when I get ready to do funerals [for gang members], I've got guys around me who will say, 'Pastor, we need to take a couple of guys with us,' or 'You need to call the police to be at that funeral.' Everything that I heard was that he was a guy who liked to party and have fun."
Brooks is the pastor who spent weeks on the rooftop of an abandoned motel last winter in an effort to get it torn down to make way for a community center in the Woodlawn neighborhood.
"It says that things are definitely out of control," Brooks said. "There was a time with a lot of gangbangers, older guys, where things were off limits, weddings, funerals. Church was off limits. Now we are living at a day and time where these younger criminals have no regard for life or for street rules. That means things have gotten to a level where someone has to step in and do some drastic things to change it."
One witness said she saw someone firing at two people outside the church.
Deborah Echols-Moore said there were several hundred mourners in the sanctuary of the church when she heard gunshots. “We thought it was someone banging on the seats,” but soon realized it was gunshots, Echols-Moore said.
People panicked and made a rush to get out of the church. "A lady fell on me.”
chicagobreaking@tribune.com
Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking
