Chicago Police continue to investigate a pair of shootings that unfolded in the Loop Friday night, leaving a 14-year-old boy dead and eight other teens wounded in the latest “teen takeover” that marred the city’s start of the holiday season.
Scores of teens were among the crowd that gathered downtown for the city’s annual tree-lighting ceremony in Millennium Park Friday.
Many were still in the area hours later, making it the latest instance of an unsanctioned downtown gathering, advertised on social media, to end in a shooting.
Shortly before 10 p.m., CPD officers heard gunfire erupt on State Street outside the Chicago Theatre. Seven teens— all 13 to 17 years old — were wounded. Minutes later and a few blocks south, police officers found a 14-year-old boy and 18-year-old man both shot. The 14-year-old, identified as Armani Floyd, was shot several times and later pronounced dead at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
The boy’s family did not immediately comment when reached by the Tribune. A GoFundMe has since been established to pay for funeral services and a vigil for him was planned for Monday evening.
Floyd was a member of a weekly South Shore basketball league, “Project sWISH,” and had dreams of playing professionally. He was “high energy, super funny, with a very vibrant personality,” said McKinley Nelson, who founded the nonprofit to address street violence.
The 14-year-old was fast and aggressive on the court and liked to challenge Nelson to one-on-one games.
“He would say, ‘Yo, if I beat you this time, then you owe me a pair of shoes,’” Nelson said. “He never got around to beating me, but I told him, ‘I’ll still give you a pair of shoes for Christmas.’”
When the league meets again next week, the players will skip basketball and instead meet with therapists on the court, according to Nelson. He said that Floyd was a freshman at Baker College Preparatory High School, a charter school in South Chicago.
After the shooting, Mayor Brandon Johnson said CPD had assigned an additional 700 officers to the downtown area to monitor festivities but added, “what we put in place did not do enough” to prevent the shootings. A CPD spokesperson told the Tribune Monday that the department was aware of the “teen takeover” via “open source” information on social media.
The large-scale gatherings and the violence that often follows have vexed city leaders for more than a decade.
Mayors and police superintendents have for years struggled with how to appease wealthier, mostly white residents who feel unsafe while ensuring the downtown area is accessible to all city residents, especially the city’s Black youth who mostly live in poorer neighborhoods on the South and West sides.
The meet-ups, organized on social media days in advance, have led to several other shootings downtown in recent years. Last March, a 15-year-old boy was shot during a “teen takeover” in Streeterville. Weeks later, a 14-year-old boy was charged in the shooting, according to police.
During summer 2024, a pair of fatal shootings at 31st Street Beach prompted the park district to scale back operating hours and install more strict security measures. In summer 2022, a fight near The Bean in Millennium Park ended in a shooting that left a 16-year-old dead. Another teen was charged as an adult in that shooting.
Though not tied to a teen gathering, the last shooting with such a high number of victims in the center of the city was at drill rapper Mello Buckzz’s album release party in the River North neighborhood in July. Four people were killed and 14 wounded in the drive-by rifle shooting.
Shortly after last weekend’s violence, Mayor Brandon Johnson called the downtown violence a “setback” that was a reminder of “the long road that we have to build the city that we all want to live in.”
CPD statistics show violent crime is down sharply across Chicago — including downtown — this year compared to 2024. Through mid-November, the city has seen 28% and 36% decreases in murders and total shooting incidents, respectively. Moreover, the city remains on course to meet Johnson’s goal of keeping the city’s annual killing total under 500 for the first time since 2019. Since Floyd’s killing Friday night, the city has recorded at least four more homicides, records show.
Johnson said young people “need to understand that they should not attend these unauthorized events that have been advertised on social media” and called on parents to accompany their children at large events like the tree lighting. Police made 18 arrests, he said, and recovered five guns while responding to the shootings.
He said the city had sent a communication through Chicago Public Schools telling students not to participate in the gathering, and that 700 additional CPD officers were deployed downtown Friday night.
“But clearly, what we put in place did not do enough to prevent what we were concerned about from actually manifesting,” Johnson said.
Over the last 10 years, CPD has overseen countless protest marches in and around the downtown area. Those sanctioned events rarely, if ever, descend into chaos despite the relatively giant crowds because CPD officials and march organizers, as a matter of practice, coordinate marching routes ahead of time.
The teen gatherings, though, are a different challenge. There is no hierarchy to the group, there’s no “route” and many of the teens have negative perceptions of police officers. Arguments or insults among smaller groups can turn into fistfights, and those skirmishes often result in shootings.
Mayor Brandon Johnson acknowledges colleagues during a turkey giveaway by an organization named Zakat Chicago in the 8600 block of South Chicago Avenue, Nov. 22, 2025, in Chicago. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
Johnson did not comment Saturday on his decision to block an ordinance that would have given the city’s police superintendent the power to implement “snap” curfews to break up the so-called “teen takeover” events.
Aldermen voted 27-22 in June to pass the curfew ordinance before Johnson issued a rare mayoral veto to shut it down. Downtown Alds. Brian Hopkins, 2nd; Bill Conway, 34th; and Brendan Reilly, 42nd, criticized the mayor’s veto decision Saturday.
“This is a textbook example of how the curfew could have been used effectively,” Hopkins told the Tribune.
But on Sunday, Johnson pointed to the “political heat” he took for vetoing the curfew Sunday during an appearance at Lakeview’s Second Unitarian Church of Chicago. The tree-lighting was a “joyous occasion” before the shooting, he said.
“The knee jerk reaction always is to find a system that would punish that behavior versus create a society in which that behavior no longer needs to exist,” he said.
The mayor argued the curfew ordinance would have given too much power to one person: Chicago’s police superintendent. He likened the “absolute authority” it would have created to President Donald Trump’s consolidation of power.
“What I’ve called for is, of course you want accountability, but accountability is a shared responsibility to make sure that all needs are met,” Johnson told the congregation. “I believe that when all needs are met, it creates a society that works for everyone.
Johnson ally Ald. William Hall shared a new ordinance Monday aimed at curbing the spread of the social media posts that spark the youth gatherings. In Hall’s ordinance, the city would be able to sue companies for costs like police deployment and property damage if the companies leave invite posts up after the city flags them. The ordinance also allows the city to fine the companies as much as $50,000 for not quickly responding to notices sent by the city flagging invites.
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School board member Che “Rhymefest” Smith, District 10, said violence and trauma in schools is a “national emergency.” Smith, whose district covers Baker College Prep, called for the creation of a Chicago Public Schools task force to more proactively address the issue on and off campus — including strengthening student support systems.
“As a human being and as a community member, I grieve,” Smith said. “I have a responsibility to be proactive … I am going to consider this, not incident by incident, but how do we address an emergency?”
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/24/investigation-downtown-shootings-armani-floyd/
