9-year-old Illinois boy fatally shot while playing at grandmother’s birthday party

FRANKLIN PARK, Ill. (TCD) — Police took a person of interest into custody after a 9-year-old boy was killed in a drive-by shooting while he was playing near an alleyway.

According to Franklin Park Police, on Saturday, July 8, Ulysses Campos attended his grandmother’s birthday party on the 2800 block of Elder Lane. At approximately 10:15 p.m., Ulysses was playing with other kids when a “disturbance took place in the alley” and gunshots were fired from a moving car.

A bullet struck Ulysses in the chest, and he was transported to Loyola Hospital, where he later died.

Franklin Park Police said four to six shots were fired from the group in the car, and no one else got hit. Officials located the suspect’s vehicle in Leyden Township.

WLS-TV reports Ulysses was only two weeks away from turning 10 years old, and his father recently bought him a PlayStation for his big birthday. A relative wrote on a GoFundMe for Ulysses that he was a “kindhearted, loving kid, he loved playing video games with his cousins, he had a creative imagination, and was always full of excitement.”