A 12-year-old boy was hospitalized after being accidentally shot while handling a gun with another boy in the Little Village neighborhood Saturday afternoon, police said Sunday morning.

The boy was one of at least nine people shot during six separate incidents Saturday and Sunday, including two people who died, and a man shot while in a minivan on the Eisenhower Expressway.

The 12-year-old was with another juvenile handling a gun they found inside a residence in the 2800 block of West 23rd Street about 3 p.m. Saturday when the gun accidentally discharged and the 12-year-old was shot in the arms, Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer Hector Alfaro said this morning.

"It was an accidental shooting,'' Alfaro said.

A 16-year-old boy, who was not with the boys at the time, was charged as a juvenile with misdemeanor reckless conduct for bringing the gun into the residence, Alfaro said.

Alfaro said the boy's condition remains "stable'' this morning. Police initially said the boy was 14 years old.

The victim's great-aunt, Anna Enriquez, 58, said the family had been at Harrison Park earlier in the day for the boy's baseball practice. When they got home, the boy, who they call J.J., showered and went across the street to play with friends, Enriquez said.

About two hours later, Enriquez and the boy's grandmother were outside playing with the boy's younger brother when they were alerted that J.J. had been shot across the street, Enriquez said.

When Enriquez and her sister, the boy's grandmother, ran across the street, they saw J.J. on the ground in the gangway behind a house.

"He was laying down screaming," she said. "I saw blood on the back of his neck and all over his clothes."

J.J., who lives on the block with his grandparents, was shot once in each arm, Alfaro said. Enriquez said she was told that his condition had stabilized.

Several other shootings occurred later Saturday and early Sunday morning that wounded eight other people -- two of whom died.

In the first homicide, the victim and two others were hurt in a shooting shortly after 9 p.m. at a park in the 6800 block of South Lowe Avenue in the Englewood neighborhood, according to Alfaro.

Paramedics responded to the Ryan Harris Memorial Park at 6781 S. Lowe Ave., according to Chicago Fire Department.

The victims were standing with a large group of family members at the park at 9:10 p.m. when someone fired shots in their direction and hit the 30-year-old woman in the head, according to police and her family.

The woman, Shaneda Lawrence, 30, of the 9600 block of South Peoria Street was pronounced dead at 12:46 a.m. at John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

Another woman, 27, was shot in the left wrist and was initially treated at Saint Bernard Hospital and Health Care Center but was transferred to Stroger, where her condition has stabilized, said Alfaro.

The third victim, a 37-year-old man, was shot in the back, and his condition has also stabilized at Saint Bernard, said Alfaro.

A description of the shooter or shooters, who were possibly on foot, was not available and no arrest have been made, according to Alfaro, who said Area South detectives are investigating.

Joseph Newman, of St. Louis, said he was a first cousin to Lawrence, whom he called a "beautiful spirit."

Newman said Lawrence and others were in the park that day after attending the funeral of a family member who died of cancer.

"She loved her family very much," Newman said of Lawrence. "She loved her family to the point where sometimes she would get depressed and hurt by all the violence and death going on in the family."

Sabrina Harris, whose daughter Ryan Harris was murdered in 1997 and who is the namesake of the park, said Lawrence was her cousin was at the park with her family when the shooting happened.

Someone shot from railroad tracks about 10 to 15 feet away, striking Lawrence in the head. She said the fact that her cousin was shot in the same park named after her own daughter, who was also a murder victim, was especially tragic. She left behind a son, Harris said.

"She took care of our cousin who died of cancer," said Harris. "It's all still senseless. Its still just senseless."

The most recently shooting occurred about 2:40 a.m. on the West Side, where a 20-year-old man who was traveling inside a minivan on the Eisenhower Expressway was shot twice, said Illinois State Police Master Sgt. Jason LoCoco.

The victim was seated in the passenger side of a Chrysler minivan that was eastbound when, around Western Avenue, someone fired shots and struck him, said LoCoco.

They did not crash, but headed straight to Stroger hospital, where police were notified.

The victim's condition had stabilized as of 6 a.m., said LoCoco, who added no arrests have been made and a description of the shooter or the gunman's vehicle was not available.

In another shooting on the Far South Side about 2:20 a.m. Sunday, a Dolton man on his way to his overnight shift was shot while seated in a car talking to his girlfriend in the West Pullman neighborhood, the 42-year-old man told the Tribune.

He was headed north to get to his job as a press operator when he stopped at the woman's home in the 12000 block of South Lafayette Avenue and was talking with her in his car when two gunman approached the car and began firing, he said.

He told the Tribune he "hovered" over his girlfriend to protect her but was shot in the left wrist in the process. She was not hurt, he said, but a woman sitting on her porch 15-20 feet away was hit by one of the bullets.

News Affairs Officer Alfaro, however, said the 57-year-old woman who was shot was the woman inside the man's car and there was only one gunman.

Paramedics got there and bandaged the man up and he wasn't taken to a hospital, he said. The woman, whose wounds were to the lower right leg Alfaro said, was taken to Roseland Community Hospital, where her condition had stabilized.

The motive for the shooting was not known, said Alfaro, and no arrests have been made.

A few minutes earlier, at 2:10 a.m., Edward Jordan, 53, was shot in the face in the 300 block of South Cicero Avenue in the South Austin neighborhood on the West Side, according to police and the Cook Couny medical examiner's office. Jordan, of the 4900 block of West Lexington Avenue, was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition where he was pronounced dead at 8:05 a.m.