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CHICAGO (CBS) — In a heartbreaking incident in Bridgeport this week, a man gave up his car – only for carjackers to shot and kill him anyway.
Shuai Guan was checking the mail at the time he was murdered on Monday. On Tuesday night, his widow, Hongyu Bai, spoke only to CBS 2’s Jermont Terry.
Many murders in Chicago lately center around a common thread – involving guns, vehicles, and assailants trying to take those vehicles by force. Such was the case on Monday when carjackers approached Guan – a loving husband and father – and took his life even though he complied with their demands.
“I want my husband back,” Bai said.
Fighting back the tears, Bai struggled to accept that her husband is gone.
“It’s the worst day of my life,” she said.
Bai’s nightmare started at 6:30 p.m. Monday, when carjackers approached Guan outside their Bridgeport home on Union Avenue near 30th Street.
Bai’s father knew something was wrong when he drove by and saw police surrounding her husband’s white Jeep Cherokee.
“And my father just called me and said, ‘You better come home,’ and I just come home,” Bai said.
When she arrived, Bai learned the commotion outside her house would leave her family with a huge void.
“I just asked him, ‘Please tell me he’s alive, he’s still alive,’ they say, ‘Sorry.’ They say, ‘Sorry,’” Bai said tearfully. “And they wouldn’t let me see him. I don’t touch him.”
The investigation reveals that Guan double-parked to check the mail. Several gunmen pulled up in two stolen cars, demanding his Jeep.
He gave up the keys and the Jeep then backed away.
“No, they didn’t take the car,” Bai said. “They don’t know how to drive the car.”
Mad at that fact, the carjackers fired a single shot, leaving a 4-year-old without a father.
“I don’t know what the police can do,” Bai said.
Across Chicago, carjackings have more than doubled. So far this year, there have been 1,400, compared with 604 carjackings in the city in all of 2019.
“This wasn’t a carjacking. It was murder,” said Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson (11th).
Thompson told Terry that this case, along with the startling stats, prove Chicago needs state and federal help when it comes to gun violence surrounding these crimes.
“I know a lot of my neighbors and friend all are getting concealed carry, and you know, this will be like the Wild West soon – everyone’s going to have it, and people are going to start using it,” Thompson said, “and that’s what the scary point.”
Earlier this month, another man – retired Chicago Fire Lt. Dwain Williams – also lost his life to gunfire during a carjacking.
On Thursday, Dec. 3, Williams, 65, was leaving the Let’s Get Poppin popcorn store at 11758 S. Western Ave. in the Morgan Park neighborhood and was walking to his vehicle, when a four-door dark-colored sedan pulled up and four men got out and bum rushed him, police said. Surveillance video shows Williams leaving the popcorn shop, where he had gone for twice a week for snacks and conversation for more than 25 years.
The video showed three armed men hopping out of another car and coming at Williams.
Williams pulled his gun and fired at one of the suspect, more shots were fired. Williams was hit in the abdomen and later died.
Two teenage suspects have now been charged in Williams’ murder.
Carjackers have also struck in recent weeks in other neighborhoods around the city from the Loop to Washington Park and from Lakeview to Bucktown, where a man was shot and wounded during a carjacking recently.
Meanwhile, as police search for the gunman in the latest case in Bridgeport, Bai is a widow, and is forced to have the uncomfortable conversation with her 4-year-old son – explaining why his daddy won’t be back.
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