3 Dead and 1 Injured Outside Gay Bar in Chicago Hit-And-Run Incident

This article first appeared in The Advocate. You can read it here.

A hit-and-run collision in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood killed three people and injured another Sunday morning. The crash was captured on video by a dashboard camera. 

At 5 a.m., four men were struck by a sedan near the longtime Black gay nightclub Jeffery Pub, according to the Chicago Police Department, Chicago’s Fox station, WFLD reports.

Three men were pronounced dead at the University of Chicago Medical Center; a fourth was seriously injured and remains hospitalized.

According to an eyewitness, a car flew down the road just as she talked to another individual after leaving the Jeffery Pub nearby, WMAQ, Chicago’s NBC affiliate, reports.

“I was standing outside the bar talking to one of the victims,” she told the station. “I took like three steps, and a car came and hit him, and he flew over the car.”

Dashcam footage shows several people in a confrontation in the street when a car approaches. The car then strikes four men at high speed, sending bodies flying before the driver flees.

Video from a higher vantage point obtained by CWBChicago on Twitter shows the shocking sequence of events.

“People drive recklessly, and it’s always at the hours those kids get out of the clubs,” De Vanderbilt, who was not there when the incident happened but knew one of the victims through a nephew, told Windy City Times. 

“What happened this morning was bound to happen,” Vanderbilt said. “The kids are acting a fool on their own—always fighting—and some of those passersby [don’t like] that club being around for as many years as it has been. I believe that the person who drove through them did that on purpose.”

A representative on the Jeffrey Pub’s Facebook page wrote, “Our hearts heavy...that such tragic event has occurred. And to those that lost a loved one or friend, we stand with you.”

Chicago authorities have not made any arrests, and the crash is being investigated.