(CNN) — When a well-known and loved homeless man nicknamed “Pepe” was killed in the crossfire of a Chicago shooting outside her home on Labor Day weekend, Erica Hernandez woke up her six-year-old son and rushed him into a bathroom.

She quickly peered through the bathroom window. Up the dark and narrow alley adjacent to her home, she saw a man firing a gun. People were running. Some crouched behind cars. As she cowered with her two sons, the bang-bang-bang sounds reverberated off the squat brick buildings of the predominantly Latino Pilsen neighborhood southwest of downtown.

She dialed 911 from her cell phone, said Hernandez. No one answered.

“It was so crazy because it was so many gunshots,” said Hernandez, adding the street was later littered with dozens of shell casings. “I’m like, ‘

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