Two teenagers were fatally shot and two others were injured outside a Chicago public school on Friday afternoon, the authorities said.
The four were taken to John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, the Chicago Police Department said in a statement.
Two boys, a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old, were struck in the head and pronounced dead at the hospital, the police said.
Another boy, 15, was struck in the thigh and shoulder and was in good condition, the police said. A girl, 15, had a graze wound to her thigh and was in good condition, the police said.
The Cook County medical examiner did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
David Brown, the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, said at a news conference on Friday that the authorities did not have anyone in custody.
“Obviously, we are conducting a pretty aggressive investigation,” he said.
The police released surveillance images of a person they wanted to identify in connection with the shooting.
It was not immediately clear what led to the shooting. It was also not clear if the victims were students.
The police said that the shooting occurred at about 2:45 p.m. outside Benito Juarez Community Academy, a public high school with about 1,700 students. Students were beginning to be dismissed around the time the shooting began, Mr. Brown said.
Mr. Brown said that investigators were looking at video taken in the area, but he did not say what it showed.
“Any crimes anywhere in the city is obviously a concern to us, but especially when they’re near or around schools,” Mr. Brown said.
The chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools, Pedro Martinez, an alumnus of Benito Juarez, said at the news conference that the city would provide support for children over the weekend and next week before the school semester ends.
“I’m very concerned because this happened on our grounds,” Mr. Martinez said.
Chicago Public Schools said in a statement that it would provide crisis team resources to students and staff in the coming days.
Representative Jesús “Chuy” García of Illinois, a Democrat whose district includes Chicago, said in a statement that “my heart breaks for the victims of this afternoon’s shooting.”
“I think especially of the parents,” he said, “who must now bear the unimaginable pain of losing a child.”
Guns became the leading killer of children in 2020, surpassing motor vehicle crashes. In 2021, 3,597 children died by gunfire, according to provisional statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That made it the highest death rate from guns in more than 20 years.
Amanda Holpuch contributed reporting.