FBG Duck, the Chicago drill rapper whose given name was Carlton Weekly, was shopping for his toddler’s birthday gift in the city’s Gold Coast neighborhood in August 2020 when multiple men shot him 16 times. His mother, LaSheena Weekly, would later witness her son’s heartbreaking final moments through the lenses of police cameras.
What she saw in the footage led her to conclude that Duck’s life could have been saved if an ambulance had arrived earlier, or if a police officer had tried to help. She sued several people and entities last year, claiming that the city “failed to render critical aid,” and that Duck lay on the ground injured for about 17 minutes before he was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, five to 10 minutes away.
Weekly’s lawsuit highlights a persistent chorus of concerns over Chicago’s emergency response times, which critics say are too slow to help injured people. In Illinois, the state’s administrative code requires fire departments to measure EMS response times against a standard of six minutes, one minute longer than the National Fire Protection Association’s widely followed five-minute standard. Weekly’s lawsuit states that the city’s failure to transport Duck sooner delayed his access to care that could have potentially saved his life.
“Why did they take so long to act, to give my son medical attention?” Weekly asked. “I need an explanation.”
A Trace analysis of last year’s medical emergency incidents, including accidents, seizures, and shootings through November 19, 2024, found that in over one in five cases, Chicago EMS took more than six minutes to respond. From 2021 through November 2024, though the department received fewer calls overall, the rate of incidents with response times longer than six minutes grew by 4.6 percentage points. Last year, it took EMS more than six minutes to respond to roughly 63,000 incidents. Slower response times mean that gunshot victims are left with a narrower window for receiving life-saving care, as Weekly claims happened to her son.
As fewer incidents met the state standard, the city’s budget for the Chicago Fire Department decreased from $644 million in 2021 to $592 million in 2025. In the past five years, its portion of the city’s corporate fund has shrunk from 16 percent to 10 percent. The decreased funding for these lifesaving services highlights gun violence survivors’ longstanding concern that the city is not investing enough in short-term solutions to help those facing the brunt of the crisis. The Mayor’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.
Weekly wants to know why her son wasn’t transported to a hospital quickly. “When you’re just stuck in a realm of wondering what happened, that can eat you up.”
‘It would have just been a little story’
Footage from a bystander showed that several police officers arrived at the scene well before Duck died. Despite their policy manual’s guidance, the officers did not render first aid, nor did they arrange for alternative transportation, like using police vehicles. During the shooters’ trial, Weekly said an officer testified that they didn’t help because the injuries looked too severe to handle on their own. Duck was pronounced dead about 5 p.m. on August 4, 2020, roughly 40 minutes after he was first shot.
Every day, Weekly wonders what would have become of her son’s career. Duck is considered a pioneer in drill, a subgenre of hip-hop that began on Chicago’s South Side. In 2019, Pitchfork said his song “Slide” was one of 11 songs that define Chicago drill. His music shared the violent realities of the environment he grew up in. In 2017, he lost his older brother to gun violence. The six men responsible for killing Duck were convicted in early 2024, four years after he was shot.

After Duck’s death, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot portrayed him as a gang member and Chicago police expressed concern that the incident could cause a “city-wide gang war.” Weekly felt these assertions defamed her son’s character, and that the city’s allegations took focus away from Chicago’s responsibility to own up to city workers’ immediate response to the shooting. “They condemned him,” she said. “Y’all evidence is more important than my son’s life?”
Emergency medical services are meant to help victims, but half a dozen survivors of gun violence interviewed said the city is not meeting their needs. First responders have blamed ambulance response times on the budget. For at least a decade, the city has weathered a shortage of ambulances and paramedics; over the years, Fire Department staff have asked for more funding.
“It’s so densely populated, that it’s really, really difficult to provide adequate services with the resources that we currently have,” said Victor Chan, who co-owns and teaches with an independent EMT training program in Chicago. The lack of resources, he added, leads to too much overtime, which causes burnout. It’s also expensive. Last year, Anthony Snyder, the director of EMS for Chicago Fire Fighters Union Local 2, estimated that over two months, CFD spent about $2 million on paramedics’ overtime pay.
“It’s infuriating,” said Juan Rendon, a survivor of gun violence. In 2012, his best friend Junior was shot and killed. Junior lost blood and died, Rendon said, because of first responders’ inability to transport him to a trauma center that could care for his critical injuries. Losing his friend made Rendon realize that Black and brown neighborhoods are not getting the resources they need to respond to gun violence. Like other survivors, he said adding more trauma centers could also help reduce ambulance response times.
Officials, Rendon said, make promises to help, but often fall short of fulfilling them. “If he would have been treated a lot earlier, or taken to a trauma center a lot faster, it would have just been a little story between me and him,” Rendon said.
The Chicago Fire Department wants more ambulances
Last summer, the Chicago firefighters union protested during the Democratic National Convention, asking for more paramedics and ambulances. They also said they had been working without a contract for over three years. The last time CFD’s fleet of 80 ambulances grew was in 2019, when former Mayor Rahm Emmanuel added five. The department has repeatedly said it needs at least 100 ambulances.
Although The Trace analysis of data from the Office of Emergency Management and Communications provides some insight, the numbers are too incomplete to definitively say whether the Chicago Fire Department is meeting the state standard of emergency response times that don’t exceed six minutes. Since 2013, the Chicago Office of Inspector General has been sounding the alarm that CFD has failed to accurately document data for ambulance response times. For each year between 2021 and 2024, over 12 percent of data is missing.
Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said CFD should implement the OIG’s recommendations to better track ambulance response times. A spokesperson from the Mayor’s Office said CFD was unavailable for an interview.
“If you have that data to support your needs and your requests, it might make it easier for the authority in jurisdiction when requesting future needs,” said Ken Holland, a senior specialist with the National Fire Protection Association, adding that it’s important to have benchmarks and be held accountable to them.
The Fire Department, Witzburg said, told her office that it asked the city’s budget office for additional staff and resources, but the city turned the department down. The Office of Budget and Management did not respond to requests for comment.
Weekly wants the city to do better. While she waits for change, the memory of her son’s cries for help keeps her up most nights.
Court documents chronicle Duck’s final words:
A police officer asked Duck where he was hit. He responded, “Everywhere.”
The officer asked again. Duck repeated himself.
About two minutes later, the officer told Duck to “keep breathing.” He replied, “Help me.”
The officer told Duck that medical responders were coming.
Again, Duck pleaded: “Help me.”
Aaron Mendelson contributed data reporting to this story.