When 10-year-old La’Mya Sparks was shot in the back last fall, her 13-year-old friend Swaysee Rankin took off his shirt and applied pressure to her wound, staying with her until paramedics arrived.

Six months later, tragedy struck the friends again. This time it was Swaysee who was shot as he walked with his 14-year-old cousin Monday night in the South Chicago neighborhood, just a block from the earlier shooting.

“After we got the news, La’Mya ran through the house screaming, ‘Swaysee got shot!’” said the girl’s mother, Shawnta Williams.

Her daughter was one of the first people to check on Swaysee at the hospital, just like Swaysee had done for her every day. Swaysee’s family said he and his cousin were out of surgery Tuesday and were talking.

The teens were walking on a sidewalk in the 8200 block of South Coles Avenue around 9:30 p.m. when someone in a car fired shots, according to Chicago police. The car, possibly a red Jeep Cherokee, backed up south on Coles and sped off.

Swaysee’s mother, Ashley Jackson, told reporters outside Comer Children’s Hospital Tuesday that the shooting appeared to be random.

“My son is absolutely not gang-affiliated from my knowledge. It was a drive-by shooting, just something random,” she said. “He left out of one house and he was on the way to the next with a group of friends and somebody just pulled up and started shooting.”

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