CHICAGO, Jan 10: Five people were shot at as spectators left a crowded high school basketball game on Friday in what police called a possibly gang-related attack that sent panicked students running into a snowy street on the city’s South Side.

Five males — three in serious condition and two in critical — were taken from Paul Laurence Dunbar Vocational Career Academy around 8pm (local time), said Chicago Fire Department spokeswoman Eve Rodriguez.

Hospital spokespeople said later that at least three of the injured were expected to be treated and released.

“It was crazy. It was like killers on the loose,” said Joshua Glaze, 15, a freshman at the school.

The game was in overtime and some students began to leave the building, Glaze said.

A vehicle then drove up and a person or people inside started shooting into the crowd, said Chicago police superintendent Jody Weis.

No suspect has been identified or arrested, but the shooting was “isolated” and possibly gang-related, Weis said. Two hundred police personnel were in the area looking for suspects, he added.

Another student at Dunbar, Shaneisha Turman, said she saw a silver truck pull up to a bus stop outside the school. People inside the truck pretended to fire a gun and then “they really started shooting,” she told the Chicago Tribune.

Police spokeswoman Monique Bond declined to characterise the victims beyond gender and would not say whether they had attended the basketball game. She said that they were “not necessarily students.”—AP