Chalk this up to sometimes fact is stranger than fiction. A television show was filming at a Chicago funeral home on Wednesday when an “unbelievable” scene broke out. NBC’s Chicago Fire shut down production after a real fire started down the street of the production set and a random person armed with a handgun shot at a group of people standing on the street.
The person in the photo under the headline is a member of the show’s cast. He is Taylor Kinney and he plays a Chicago firefighter.
Fortunately, there are no reports of anyone being hurt.
Violent crime is off the charts in Chicago and this is another example of a random shooting causing chaos among the city’s residents. The show was filming in front of A.A. Rayner & Sons Funeral Homes. A real fire broke out down the street. This caused confusion among residents who thought the actors were real firefighters, just standing around, choosing not to respond to the fire. The cast had been practicing extinguishing a real fire when an armed suspect fired shots near the production set, according to Charles Childs, Jr., director of the funeral home.
All of this happened about 1:45 p.m. Wednesday afternoon. Chicago Fire Department responded to a real fire on the same block as the funeral home. The location is near the Oak Park area of Chicago, according to the Chicago Police Department who said that an “unknown offender, armed with a handgun” shot at a group of people standing on the street. There was a lot of confusion among the bystanders.
Childs Jr. explained the entire scenario was “chaotic” as neighbors were bewildered as to why the dozens of assumed firefighters in his lot weren’t responding to the fire down the street, unbeknownst to them that the people they had been watching put out fires weren’t trained first responders, but were actually actors.
“We had the honor of being selected to be in an episode of ‘Chicago Fire,’ and the crew was standing outside when all of a sudden they were getting prepared to do a shoot,” Childs Jr. explained of the general scene at A.A. Rayner & Sons Funeral Homes on Madison Street.
“First, a fire broke out in the adjacent block down on 1500 West Madison. Then, the Chicago Fire Department (CFD) responded to that, and while Chicago Fire Department responded, ‘Chicago Fire’ television stars and crew were just one block away so people saw the actors and wanted to know why they weren’t responding to the real fire.”
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The bystanders were asking the actors for help, not realizing they weren’t the real firefighters. Charles said it was like the storyline of a best-selling book. He paints a surreal atmosphere.
“At the funeral home, it was a make believe fire, and the actors were just doing their jobs,” he said. “So while all of this was going on, some idiot used a firearm and shoots at people. We don’t know who was being targeted. We don’t know who the assailant was.”
“It was chaotic because all these activities were going on at the same time,” Childs Jr. said. “Why would somebody do that? There was a police presence. There were security guards present. It was just an unbelievable situation.”
He added, “It was one of those days. You couldn’t have written this in a novel.”
The armed suspect fled the scene and Chicago Police Department is investigating the shooting. It’s not clear if he aimed for the actors or for the residents standing in the street. Violent crime is an everyday occurrence in Chicago, a Democrat-controlled city.
Last month another production company shut down filming due to threats of violence. That was in Baltimore, another Democrat-led city facing spikes in crime, for Natalie Portman’s “Lady in the Lake”. A street vendor was upset that he would lose income while the production crew was filming in his territory. An arrest was made in that case.
In Biden’s America, spikes in violent crime is not a make-believe story and it is happening across the country.
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