Chicago Eye Doctors Treat Influx Of Paintball Shooting Victims

Eye doctors and Chicago law enforcement officials are warning pedestrians about an influx in paintball shootings that the caution are dangerous, sending some to the hospital with possibly permanent loss of vision.

The University of Chicago Medical Center surgeons might see one paintball injury every few months, but recently, that number has spiked to as many as eight injuries in a weekend, ABC7Chicago reported. Eight paintball-related reports came in to the University of Chicago police over the past few days, and have been rolling in for weeks.

One paintball attack happened last month along Michigan Avenue, shooting two men across from Grant Park. After that, a 58-year-old woman at a bus stop was shot with paintballs, WGN9 reported Monday (October 12), noting that police say it’s a felony to shoot pedestrians with paintball guns.

"It is very rare to see seven to eight severe eye injuries of any sort within a weekend, much less of the same kind," Ophthalmologist Dr. Hassan Shah told the station. "These injuries do range from bleeding inside the eye and vision loss to where the eye actually ruptures — and we saw that whole range during this weekend…High velocity paintball injuries can be severely damaging to eyes and it will often result in permanent vision loss.”

Dr. Ema Avdagic told WGN9 that paintball guns can shoot at up to 300 feet per second, fast enough to yield severe injuries without protective equipment.

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