Demetrius Sandifer came to Washington Park on Saturday to see some old friends.
Sandifer, 42, described the gathering in the park, a block or two north of University of Chicago Hospital, as a reunion for former residents of the Robert Taylor Homes, where he’d lived until 2005. He was talking to his girlfriend in the park, he remembered, when he heard shooting start behind him.
“I (saw) the fire come out of the gun,” he said. “That’s how close I was.”
Sandifer was one of 15 people shot in what ultimately became the largest mass shooting Chicago has seen this year.
According to initial police information reviewed by the Tribune, a pair of shooters dressed in black and wearing ski masks had approached the gathering just after 11:30 p.m. and fired from across Cottage Grove Avenue into Washington Park. Per the initial information, someone shot back from inside the park, and officers later found two sets of shell casings in the park and across the street, including rifle casings.
The shooting comes toward the end of a summer that could still leave Chicago in position to match 2025’s rate of gun violence, which was the lowest seen in a decade. But the summer months have also thrown into sharp relief the unequal way in which those decreases in violence have shown up across the city.
Data updated through Aug. 23 shows that the Chicago Police Department’s Area 1, which covers Washington Park and much of the city’s mid-South and Southwest sides, is seeing a 58% spike in homicides compared with the same period last year. But steep drops in shootings and homicides in other parts of Chicago mean that the number of shootings citywide is 2% lower than the same period last year, while homicides are up slightly, by 4%.
In Washington Park, the original report that 10 people had been shot in the attack grew to 15 over the course of Sunday morning, as authorities connected the incident to people who had self-transported for medical treatment. Previously, the largest tally from a single shooting in 2026 had been a drive-by shooting in Roseland over Juneteenth weekend that left 14 people wounded.
Per a police report obtained by the Tribune, the victims in Saturday’s shooting ranged in age from 21 to 47. They had come to the park from all over the city and suburbs, but mostly resided across the South Side.
The parents and girlfriend of Rontonio Guterz, who was the only person killed in the attack, couldn’t be reached for comment.
But Shontia Sanders, who was wounded in the attack, said the 35-year-old, who went by Tray, was essentially a brother to her family.
“He was a good man; he was a good father,” she said. “It’s a tremendous loss, to his family and us.”
Sanders, 40, said she “wasn’t even out there a whole hour” before the shooting. She wasn’t aware of a specific reunion that was bringing everyone together that night; she said she just stopped by at the invitation of a friend.
She was all too familiar with gun violence before this weekend: Her brother Christopher Sanders was killed in the 2005 Taste of Chicago shooting. Another brother had also been shot, she said, but survived. They were her first thought Saturday night when she heard gunfire.
“I hope I don’t die out here,” she said. “And then I knew I was shot. Then shots just rang out again.”
Sanders was wounded in the back, and by Monday afternoon was home from the hospital and recuperating. She was glad to get back to her three kids, she said, who are “just taking it in along with me.”
Sandifer, when reached by phone Monday, was still in the hospital as he awaited surgery to remove the bullet from his foot. It had broken two bones in his ankle, he said.
“I’m going to be out of work for a minute,” he said. “I don’t want to, though. I love my job.”
He’s not sure how long he will be laid up before he can return to work as a maintenance man for a group of buildings in Bronzeville.
He has been around shootings, and had the thought that something could happen at Washington Park.
“It’s Chicago — every week something happens,” he said.
But at the same time, actually getting shot felt like a far off possibility to him. He has “no idea” know who the shooters might have been targeting.
Sanders said it was similarly unclear to her why someone would fire on Saturday night’s party. She has been to many picnics before, and nothing like this had ever happened.
Now, she said, “I’m just terrified to attend another one.”
No one was in custody as of Monday for the shooting, police said, as Wentworth area detectives continued their investigation.
