CHICAGO (CBS) — Kayden Swann, the 21-month-old boy who was shot in a road rage incident on Lake Shore Drive downtown last week, continued to make “slow and steady progress” Monday.
Lurie Children’s Hospital said in a statement that Kayden can now move his extremities – and while he is still intubated and in critical condition, “we are hopeful that we may be able to remove the ventilator at some point in the future.”
The entire pediatric intensive care unit at the hospital has been working to treat Kayden and attend to his family – including the nursing, social work, family services, respiratory therapists, physicians, and surgeons, the hospital said.
The 21-month-old boy was a passenger in a car shot at over the course of two blocks on northbound Lake Shore Drive near Roosevelt Road along Grant Park on April 6. The child was shot in the face. Police radio communications indicated he was shot once in the temple and once in the jaw.
The white sedan carrying the child ended up crashing on Lake Shore Drive near Monroe Drive.
Jushawn Brown, who was driving the car Kayden was in, said he did everything he could to de-escalate the road rage incident and get away from the driver that brandished a weapon, then started firing at him.
Despite that, he was charged with felony weapons charges. He said he tried shouting that the lane was merging. And with that, the scariest minute of his life began. The driver of a Toyota sport-utility vehicle with Michigan plates brandished the weapon, shouted, chased, then began shooting.
The two cars were simultaneously merging into the same lane in a construction zone near Soldier Field. With his girlfriend’s grandson in the backseat, he tried again to get away and end it.
Kayden was shot in the temple.
The SUV got away. A Good Samaritan picked Kayden and his family up and took them to the hospital