Seventeen-year-old Naome Zuber, a Curie High School student, was fatally shot while riding in a car in the Back of the Yards neighborhood early Saturday.
Family members and police do not believe she was the intended target of the shooting.
The teen was in the backseat of a vehicle traveling north in the 4500 block of South Wood about 12:30 a.m. when a male on the sidewalk shot her in the head, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office and Chicago Police.
She was taken to Holy Cross Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 12:52 a.m., the medical examiner’s office and police said. She lived in the 5400 block of South Kenneth.
On the Remembering Naome Zuber GoFundMe page, family members said she was en route to a friend’s birthday party when she was hit by a stray bullet.
Naome Zuber | Facebook
The page, set up to help offset funeral expenses, had raised more than $6,000 as of Monday morning.
“She was the sweetest, most lovable person I knew. She was the oldest of 3. She loved volleyball, shopping and just being with her friends,” the page said of Zuber.
A senior at Curie High, she was on the cheerleading squad there, and also worked part-time at U.S. Cellualr Field, according to family members.
In a Facebook posting, Zuber’s father Ernesto Alvarez wrote: “As you have probably heard by now…my daughter,my beautiful baby Naome Zuber was taken from me last night in senseless act of violence. She was the my little angel. My little Naomus(my dad’s nickname for her) I hope they’re in heaven together. … I remember you wanting grandpa to walk you down the isle. You were robbed of so much life…RIP my baby.”
Cook County Commissioner Sean Morrison is offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the case, and anti-violence activist Andrew Holmes led a group going door-to-door in the neighborhood seeking onformation.
Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to call Holmes’ anonymous hotline at 1-800-883-5587.
—Chicago Sun-Times Wire and Homicide Watch Chicago