Police vehicle file photo. (Michael Izquierdo / WTTW News)

A 7-year-old boy was killed in a “random shooting” on the near West Side Tuesday afternoon.

Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling confirmed that the boy died after he was shot around 3 p.m. Tuesday in the 2300 block of West Jackson Boulevard.

“This is unacceptable,” Snelling said. “We are losing our children and we really need to think about the gun violence that’s going on in this city.”

According to Snelling, officers received a report of shots fired and responded to the scene, where they found the victim with a gunshot wound to his chest. Officers attempted life-saving measures and rushed him to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Snelling said the boy was exiting his apartment in the area and was walking to visit a neighbor when he was shot. He said the shots came from a distance and called the shooting “random” and said the boy was not the intended victim.

No one was in custody in connection with the shooting as of Tuesday evening.

There have been 127 juveniles who have been victims of gun violence this year, Snelling said. Seventeen of those children were killed.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, who spoke beside Snelling outside Stroger, said the grief in the city over the shootings of young people has become “increasingly unbearable.”

“The ungodly behavior, the acts of violence that have plagued our city for so long have reached the breaking point in this city,” he said, “where this is no longer just simply about tragedy. This is about course-correcting ways of life of some individuals in this city that have cause terror, trauma and torment.”