Two hours after his son was shot, all Salvador Aguado knew was that the person inside the emergency room was not him.

His son’s friend had called saying someone shot Alejandro Aguado, as well as a woman and another man, early Tuesday and that the woman was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital.

So Aguado and his relatives rushed to the emergency room, hoping his son also was there. They were joined by the family of the other man shot. But police and hospital staff told them only the woman was inside. They did not know where the other wounded had been taken.

“They should know where the person’s at,” Aguado said, a blank look on his face. “We didn’t know what was going on. I felt anxiety to be out there.”

After a flurry of calls to other hospitals — Northwestern Memorial, Stroger, St. Anthony — Aguado and his family finally found his 22-year-old son. He had already died.

“He’s dead,” Aguado said outside Norwegian American Hospital. “I understand all the families that have lost loved ones to gun violence now. You don’t realize it until it happens to you.”

Alejandro Aguado and the other two had gotten together after the woman finished working in the area, according to Chicago police spokesman Jose Jara. They were walking along The 606 trail in Logan Square when three people confronted them around 12:10 a.m. in the 1800 block of North Monticello Avenue. They demanded to know their gang affiliation, then pulled out handguns and fired as Aguado and the others ran away, police said.

Aguado was shot in the chest and back and was pronounced dead at Norwegian American. The other man, 20, was shot in the lower back and was stabilized at Stroger Hospital. The woman, 19, was taken to Mount Sinai in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the abdomen, police said.

Officers walked between the elevated trail’s ivy-covered fences as they worked the scene. Others shone flashlights on the sidewalk of a residential area along Lawndale Avenue by the YMCA. No arrests have been made. Police later said they have increased bike patrols and uniformed officers along the trail.

None of victims had prior run-ins with police, authorities said.

Alejandro Aguado steered clear of gangs and lived in Calumet City with his mother and 2-year-old daughter, Salvador Aguado said. He grew up in the South Chicago neighborhood and regularly drove to the city for work and to see friends, both of which he did the day before he died, his dad said.

“He was a good father,” said his aunt, Reyna Aguado. “The little girl was always looking for her dad.”

Aguado worked two jobs to provide for his daughter — one at a Burger King in the city and the other as a delivery driver. But he was scheduled to take a break this Friday, having booked tickets to fly with his father to Durango, Mexico.

Salvador Aguado has family there, but his son hadn’t been back to the country since he was a small child — about the age of his daughter now. Back then, the simple sight of a horse at a farm mesmerized the boy.

Aguado said he will most miss his son’s devotion. “He always listens to me when I tell him what to do,” Aguado said. “I was always on him, and he listened.”

ayin@chicagotribune.com

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