Chicago’s top officer says a White Sox game where 2 were shot should have been stopped or delayed

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This article was published 21/09/2023 (733 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CHICAGO (AP) — A Chicago White Sox game last month where two women were wounded by gunfire should have been stopped or delayed, the city’s interim police superintendent said Thursday.

The Aug. 25 game against the Oakland A’s was allowed to continue without interruption after the two women were shot near Section 161 of Guaranteed Rate Field because of “miscommunication” on the protocol for notifying Major League Baseball, interim Supt. Fred Waller told the Chicago Sun-Times.

“We’ve taken some steps to make sure that … we have the right people in place to delay or stop completely a game like that, so it won’t happen again,” Waller said in an interview.

“We did not know exactly what we had on our hands. We didn’t think it was an active shooter. But we didn’t know,” Waller said.

Police still don’t know whether the bullets came from inside or outside Guaranteed Rate Field and likely will never be certain, Waller said.

Waller was overseeing street operations citywide when he learned of the shooting. He was told Chief of Patrol Brian McDermott had called for the game to be stopped and that police, team officials and the private security firm hired by the Sox had started looking at video.

“A mistake was made because the (game) was not stopped,” Waller said.

No suspects have been identified. The gunfire wounded a 42-year-old woman’s leg and grazed a 26-year-old woman.

“We’re still using technology to show us if it could have happened from outside the park. … We’re looking at cameras from inside the park to make sure that we’re not missing something,” Waller said.

White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf has stated he doesn’t “see any way in the world that the shots could have come from inside the ballpark.”