According to press reports, the incident occurred around 6 p.m. May 16. Sercye and his friends were playing basketball in an alley adjacent to Ravenswood Hospital Medical Center, a small Chicago hospital with a religious affiliation. Three boys, allegedly Latino gang members, approached, and one shot Sercye twice in the abdomen. At least one bullet, it would later be learned, pierced his aorta. Almost certainly, blood began streaming out immediately into his abdominal cavity. A young, healthy person can lose a lot of blood and survive, but Sercye needed care within minutes if he was going to make it. His friends carried him to the bottom of a ramp to the emergency room. One ran into the hospital for help. Two police officers he found there immediately told the ER staff. But the staff refused to help, citing hospital policy prohibiting workers from leaving the ER. They could not even provide a gurney, they said. For 15 excruciating minutes, Sercye lay bleeding 35 feet from the hospital entrance, until finally an officer commandeered a wheelchair, loaded Sercye into it, and pushed him through the door. He was still alive, but the odds against him were rising rapidly. Some 45 minutes later, he was pronounced dead.