Father woke up to find his 4-year-old son in pool of blood at South Deering home, police report says

A father who was asleep at his South Deering home woke up to find his 4-year-old shot and critically wounded, according to new details from Chicago police.

Officers responded to a residence in the 2200 block of East 99th Street at 4:01 p.m. Tuesday and found the boy in the back of an ambulance “covered in blood with a gash wound to his face,” according to a police report obtained by the Sun-Times.

He also had “unusual trauma and bruising” to his chest and face, according to police.

The boy’s father told responding officers he had been asleep in the basement of the home when he woke up to find his son lying in a pool of blood, authorities said.

When officers entered the basement, they found that the blood had smear marks that made it appear like “someone was trying to wipe the blood up,” the report said. Officers also noticed the boy’s father had blood on his shoes.

A handgun was found underneath a dresser with a spent shell casing nearby, and a CT scan at Comer Children’s Hospital revealed the boy had a bullet lodged in his head, according to the report.

The boy’s grandmother came to the home from a doctor’s appointment around 1 p.m. Tuesday and saw the boy sitting on the couch eating crackers before she went upstairs and closed the door, police said.

The grandmother, who has difficulty hearing, received a message from the boy’s father to come check his condition and called police when she saw him lying in blood, the report states.

The original call officers responded to was for a child “that hit their head and fell,” according to the report.

When reached by a Sun-Times reporter, the boy’s father hung up, and his grandmother declined to comment.

No arrests were made.

Area 2 detectives are investigating.