Gunfire erupted outside St. Sabina Catholic Parish in Chicago on February 4, 2026. The gunmen didn’t attack the church or school. Instead, they appeared to target the occupants of a white car. A witness captured video of the terrifying ordeal as it unfolded in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood just before 1:30 p.m. Three people fired dozens of shots into the vehicle, hitting 26-year-old Gabryel Ayers and an unidentified 27-year-old male. Miraculously, Ayer’s baby girl survived the brazen attack, but her mother died of gunshot wounds.
Ayers, her male driver, and her baby girl were all inside the white car, CBS Chicago reported. They crashed into a GMC van in the 7900 block of South May Street. After the crash, eyewitness video shows the gunmen in the street shooting dozens of rounds into the white car. The shooters got into a red Alfa Romeo and continued firing into the white car as they fled the scene.
The witness reportedly saw the shooting on the way home from work, CBS Chicago reported. Afterward, authorities found a 1-year-old baby inside the car with a lollipop.
“Thank god that baby is so young, they probably won’t remember this day, but that baby is going to know that their mother was killed today. That baby could have been killed,” St. Sabina Pastor Father Michael Pfleger shared, per CBS Chicago.
Pfleger has long been an advocate against gun violence and worked with his parish and the neighborhood for peace.
“They all had long guns. It’s just crazy,” he said. “Somebody needs to be held accountable and if anybody knows who did that I think we got some good shots off the cameras on the buildings over there. I just want them caught.”
Emergency responders took Ayers to Little Company of Mary Hospital, where she later died of her wounds, ABC 7 reported.
Ayers’ godfather, Kirk Bell, could not believe what happened. “What’s the purpose of shooting at a car when you know there’s a child in the car? That doesn’t make any sense,” Bell told ABC 7. “It could be a lot of other people who’s lost their life here today.”
Bell added that no one thought about who was inside that car, just how many shots they could fire.
“You know, there’s a baby in the car. These animals have no value on life. This is nothing to them,” he added. “They need to clean this city up. They need to. There’s gangs, and there’s shooting and the killing. It’s just unbelievable.”
The gunmen remain at large.
Thankfully, this baby will never remember this tragic day. But she will grow up without her mother and will want to know the story. We can’t imagine having to be the adult who tells her what really happened.
