A Chicago police officer shot and wounded a man as he ran from police in the South Chicago neighborhood, authorities said.



The 25-year-old man was shot several times but was expected to survive, according to Patrick Camden, a spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police union.



The shooting happened in the middle of a nine-hour period in which at least 18 other people were shot, three of them fatally, across the city. It was the third police-involved shooting since Sunday morning in Chicago.



Police officers had approached a group of people standing together in the 8900 block of South Burley Avenue around 9:10 p.m. Tuesday, according to a preliminary statement from the Chicago Police Department. A man with a chrome object in his waistband began walking away, then began running when police asked him to stop, Camden said.



What happened next is unclear.



Camden said man repeatedly reached for the object in his waistband as he ran away. When the man turned toward an officer with the object in his hand, a second officer opened fire, striking the man in the leg and the arm, Camden said.



A local resident standing near the crime scene two hours later had a different account.



Charlene "Nana" Brown, 19, said the man was running from police with his hands in the air when he was shot. "He slowed down real quick, like he got shot in the back," she said. The man, whom Brown knows from the same neighborhood, fell steps later after apparently being shot again, she said.



Camden rejected the suggestion the man's hands had been raised skyward.



"If he was running with his hands in the air, I assure you, he wouldn't have been shot," the union spokesman said. "The officer, when he took action, was fearing for his partner's life. You don't fear for your partner's life if somebody's got their hands in the air."



A police statement did not mention a weapon being recovered, and Camden did not know of one being found.



A large number of onlookers crowded the area after the shooting, which Camden said complicated the efforts of officers to secure the crime scene.



