3-year-old wounded in US shooting

The flare-up in gun violence igniting the streets of Chicago caught a 3-year-old boy in the cross fire early Saturday morning, local police said.

The child is in critical condition.

The boy was with his mother and another man, in the city’s Brighton Park neighborhood, when the shooting occurred outside a home on South Sacramento Avenue, police told CNN Chicago affiliate WLS.

The woman told investigators that three people — two women and a man — walked past them, and the man opened fire when they reached the end of the block.

Medical personal rushed the toddler to Mt. Sinai Hospital with gunshot wounds in his right hip and stomach, hospital officials said.

Police continue to investigate whether the shooting is gang-related.

This latest episode comes less than 24 hours after a shooter sprayed bullets outside a convenience store on the city’s West Side, killing 12-year-old Samuel Walker and wounding six others.

Samuel had just finished a day at summer school Friday and stopped at the store, probably to buy a snack, when he was shot, his aunt Maribell Ruiz told CNN affiliate WLS.

“He was like a little man in the house,” she said. “He helped his mother. He helped everybody.”