Violence Reverberates Through Chicago

July 07--Smoke hung over 47th Street as a man fired a silver handgun down the block in the blue light of dawn.

Two cars raced past, blowing the red light as they sped toward the Dan Ryan Expressway not far away. Two SUVs quickly followed, but only made it another block before one rammed the other and stopped dead in the road, its hood crumpled and its engine smoking.

Two young men, one in a white T-shirt and the other in a red T-shirt, jumped out and ran, leaving the SUV in the middle of 47th just east of Racine Avenue. Minutes later, a police car pulled up and an officer got out shouldering an AR-15 assault rifle as he made a wide circle around the passenger side. His partner slowly approached the driver's side with her hand on her gun.

No one was inside.

It was just one scene in a city where gunfire has long been too common. In the first six months of this year, more than 1,000 people were shot in Chicago, according to a Tribune analysis.

The trends have been positive this year, with the number of shootings and homicides running below last year's tragic spike, but similar to other recent years. The regular weekly statistics released by Chicago police include the number of shooting incidents, not the number of victims. Even if an incident involves multiple victims, it is counted as a single shooting. But the Tribune analysis focused on the number of victims.

A quick glance at a map of these shootings shows that this violence takes an inordinate toll on a swath of the city spanning West Pullman on the Far South Side to Austin on the western edge. Night after night, guns pop and scenes unfold.

Jan. 26 -- Bridgeport

The two bodies -- Chicago's first double homicide of 2013 -- blocked one end of a glass entryway at Kevin's Hamburger Heaven, a 24-hour diner.

Uniformed officers parked three cars in front of the bodies, a maneuver that blocked TV cameras and family members from getting a good look at the bodies.

Family had rushed to the scene at Pershing Road and Wallace Street on hearing of the shooting about 4 a.m. They all seemed to think they knew who died but weren't sure, so one called a young officer to the yellow tape to ask what happened.

"There's two gentlemen there," the officer said before pausing briefly. "They're DOA."

"Oh, my lord!" one relative yelled.

Across Wallace, red-eyed patrons of Dox Grill hunched over plates of hash browns and eggs while Linda Penna took orders and doled out food.

"I was standing here (at the register), taking someone's money," she said. "I swear, I didn't hear no bullets or nothing."

The two restaurants draw different gangs.

"One side's one thing, one side's another," Penna said. "That's just how it is."

April 10 -- West Pullman

Rain pelted the shirtless body of Courtney Young, 36, as he lay on the sidewalk where he was shot dead about 8:30 p.m. Paramedics had cut away his clothing in an attempt to save his life.

Young and his 19-year-old brother were walking north toward 120th Street when two men walked up from behind, opened fire and then disappeared. The younger sibling survived three gunshot wounds to his legs.

"I grew up around here. I know a lot of people," said Quinton Randoe, 42, who walked over from his home on the block north of the crime scene. "I just want to make sure it's nobody I know."

A gust of wind turned a detective's umbrella inside out, and she ducked back inside his car. Her partner stood in the rain with forensic investigators who took photos and fingerprinted the body.

When investigators finished, one replaced the white sheet over Young's body that had covered him before investigators began their work. Within minutes the sheet was soaked by the rain and clung to the body.

A white van, waiting by the crime scene, pulled forward to take the body away. Investigators scoured the ground after the body was moved, looking for more evidence.

An officer blocking traffic turned off the blue lights and cut the tape blocking the intersection near the shooting so traffic could resume.

May 1 -- South Austin

Jaylen Price, 10, threw a football around with his young brothers and cousins after eating pizza.

Down Waller Avenue, an argument escalated into gunfire, and Jaylen was hit by a stray bullet.

Once he was released from the hospital a few days after the shooting, he had to be carried up two flights of stairs to his mother's apartment. Now, he can walk on his own, but the shooting has taken an emotional toll.

"Discussing it over and over again and him reliving it, he doesn't even want to think of it," said his mother, LaShondra Jones. "He goes to counseling, but I think he's burnt out with it."

"We're trying to keep his spirits high. We do the video games. He reads his little books."

His mother said that because the bullet is still in his body, he will likely be sidelined from his Pop Warner football team for the rest of the summer, but the team planned to put his name on the roster anyway.

As she spoke, seven small blasts sounded in succession outside the apartment building -- followed by a loud thud from the floor above, where her children were.

"They're hitting the floor," Jones said. "That's what they're doing."

May 25 -- South Austin

Leetema Daniels' family negotiated with police 25 feet from where his body lay in a West Side gangway just after midnight, the fourth homicide victim within a week in the neighborhood.

Their faces -- the tears, the strained looks -- showed that they knew the 17-year-old was dead. But they wanted a closer look.

They cajoled, begged, tried to slide under the yellow tape, as police processed the crime scene. .

"We just wanna know (it's him). They just letting him lay in the doorway, lay in the doorway like a (expletive) dog," his aunt Tawana Sanders said.

Police said Daniels and the 18-year-old boy wounded in the same attack did not have documented gang affiliations. The two were on the sidewalk with others when a pair of gunmen approached and opened fire.

Daniels, shot twice in the head, died where he fell. His friend was shot once in the chest and rushed to the hospital. .

Sanders stood on a Central Avenue sidewalk near the gangway where Daniels fell and explained the pain of seeing him on the ground with only his feet visible under a blanket. An ambulance neared, its siren blaring, as she spoke.

"I guess they're coming to finally get him," she said.

But that ambulance didn't stop.

In a nearby alley littered with bricks and railroad ties, a detective -- standing at least a full foot taller than Daniels' mother -- promised her closure.

"I'm not going to let you go from here without you knowing," the detective said.

As a crowd gathered across Central, Daniels' mother shouted at nobody in particular.

"They wanna play gangsta, we can play gangsta!" she shouted, her cries echoing off the brick buildings looming over the alley. "They wanna play clique, they wanna play gang, we can do that!"

May 29 -- West Pullman

Caleb Anderson was talking to one of his mother's neighbors about a security job when a gray car rolled slowly down the block and someone inside started shooting. Anderson was shot in the groin.

"I just took a couple of steps, and I just laid down in the grass and then kept applying pressure," said Anderson, 21, a former Army National Guard military police officer. He spent only one night in the hospital, but the shooting rattled him, especially since it was the second time in a few days he had been targeted.

Worried about a third attempt, Anderson cut his hair to change his appearance.

"I don't plan on staying here too (much) longer," he said of his mom's residence. "I don't want to be somewhere where I got shot. I want to go somewhere on my own and take care of my family. I've got a 2-year-old daughter and fiancee."

Police said Anderson's shooting was part of a conflict between warring factions of the Gangster Disciples and Black Disciples. Anderson denies gang ties, but police said he's declined to cooperate in the investigation into his shooting. His mother, Kisha Anderson, said cooperating could invite retaliation.

The Calumet district on the Far South Side -- which includes the West Pullman neighborhood -- began the year fairly quietly, with just 13 shootings through March, an almost 60 percent drop from a year earlier, department statistics show. But since April, shootings have nearly matched the pace for the year-earlier period.

For now Anderson tries to keep away from Halsted Street, the dividing line between the two gangs and once his favorite spot to buy cigarettes.

"If it were meant for me to go, I would've been gone," he said. "I felt like God was looking over me."

June 5 -- West Pullman

Richie Murphy, 40, was visiting from out of state, drinking a beer with two friends outside his mom's home when gunmen wearing Halloween masks appeared and opened fire. All three were wounded but survived.

For Murphy's mom, Diane Woods, it marked the second time in less than two months that one of her sons had been shot outside her home in the 12300 block of South Emerald Avenue. Jackie Murphy, 37, also survived when someone tried to steal his car and shot him.

Both times Woods, 59, heard the gunshots while she sat in the living room with her infant great-granddaughter. She carried the baby both times in the dining room, as far away from the front window as possible.

She generally keeps to herself out of fear that dealings with her neighbors could involve her in their disputes and endanger her.

Knowing her sons' assailants could still be in the area has only made life for Woods more uneasy.

"The little boys in the neighborhood ... they're just shooting at random, shoot anybody," she said. "They don't care if it's a group of little babies out here. They shoot into a crowd with little babies. And 1 out of 10, they won't hit the person they're after."

June 6 -- Marquette Park

Marchello Kellum stood still on the dark street corner and stared across Francisco Avenue at his brother-in-law shot dead.

He didn't move as detectives plodded down the street knocking on doors, looking for witnesses. He didn't move as neighbors checked out the crime scene, curious about the gunfire they had heard.

And he still didn't move as a drunk, arms tucked into a black T-shirt pulled nearly over his head, glided past and danced backward after hitting the crime tape. The drunk ducked underneath and was pushed back by officers who pulled off his shirt in the tussle. When he leaned into the tape for the shirt, one of the officers aimed a Taser at him, red targeting dots glowing on his bare abdomen.

Kellum finally spoke.

"You're being real disrespectful right now, man. That's my brother-in-law right there," he said, abruptly stopping as he gripped the zippers on his jacket and clenched his jaw. He turned his gaze back toward the body of brother-in-law George Anderson.

Police weren't sure why Anderson was shot in the head at Francisco and 64th Street, though he had more than a dozen arrests, mostly related to drugs.

Kellum dismissed suggestions from police that the shooting may have been gang-related.

"The only people gangbanging is the young guys," he said. "You wanna gangbang, that's 22 and under. He was just making 30."

Anderson left two children, including a first-grader who attended school a block from Kellum's Englewood home.

Kellum wasn't sure how he or the girl's mother would break the news to her.

"She can't know right now," he said.

June 15 -- Little Village

A man approached a group standing on Ridgeway Avenue just north of 26th Street and opened fire. Afterward, Ricardo Herrera, 21, lay dead in a gangway and two others were seriously wounded on a bloody Saturday that saw more than two dozen shot across Chicago.

The violence on Ridgeway may also have prompted another fatal shooting less than a mile away while police were still investigating Herrera's killing. The victims in those separate Little Village slayings belonged to opposing gangs, police said.

As dozens of mourners and friends stood quietly outside the crime scene under an almost clear sky, a gunman near Pulaski Road squeezed off three or four shots -- then paused -- and shot two more times.

"Sergeant, you hear that?" asked an officer, his gloved hand holding his radio.

The supervisor nodded and waited for a break in the constant chatter on the police radio to call in the gunfire. "This is 10-50 Robert, we're getting loud reports over here, three to four blocks east."

Herrera's mother approached the crime scene and wept. A woman brought a glass of water to the police officer, who passed it to the mother.

"I want to see him!" she shouted in Spanish through tears.

One of Herrera's relatives consoled her, holding her to his chest as he struggled with his own grief.

Ridgeway and Lawndale avenues function as fluid dividing lines between two gangs that claim large swaths of the neighborhood, police and residents said.

About 90 minutes later at 31st Street and Pulaski Road, the territory of another gang, an 18-year-old man inside a car and a 22-year-old woman standing nearby were wounded by shots from a gray SUV.

Virginia Rodriguez heard the shots from the second floor of the two-flat across the street and shouted to her 16-year-old daughter to duck.

"I have to barricade her in. She's not allowed to come out," Rodriguez said.

Police laid index cards over the shell casings that littered the street, but the wind blew them into a parking lot.

Rodriguez didn't flinch when blocks to the west a few soft pops cut through the otherwise repetitive sound of CTA buses and cars trying to navigate around the crime scene.

June 16 -- South Austin

On Father's Day, three little girls took turns jumping rope on Leclaire Avenue while other children rode bicycles on the sidewalk -- only to be blocked by yellow tape put up by police working a shooting scene down the block.

One officer placed evidence markers along the sidewalk and front lawn of the two-story apartment house where a man and a woman were shot on the front porch. More than 40 people had been shot over the weekend, Chicago's worst so far this year.

Police identified the male victim as a Traveling Vice Lords member and said the Leclaire block is a "high-level gang conflict area."

While homicides and shootings have dropped sharply citywide compared with last year's bloody start, the West Side's Austin district is one of the only police districts in the city to post an increase in shootings, department statistics show. Through June, the district tallied 45 shootings, up from 42 a year earlier.

Far from the Leclaire crime scene, Jerome Jackson and about a dozen relatives celebrated Father's Day, cooking barbecue outside and trying to ignore the police activity.

"I'm concerned about the kids' safety," Jackson said. "This is a nice neighborhood. We need some help."

June 30 -- West Englewood

Leslie Freeman was in the front passenger seat of a minivan with her 1-year-old son, Demonte, on her lap, enjoying the cool summer evening near Murray Park, when a red van pulled up, a side door slid open and two gunmen fired nearly a dozen shots about 6 p.m. Sunday.

The bullets missed a 7-year-old child who was outside the minivan and four younger children who were inside. But Freeman was hit in the wrist and her son in the leg.

"I couldn't believe it when I got the call," said Sabrina Freeman, whose daughter and grandson were wounded. "Who would do something like this?"

Sabrina Freeman lost a son, Deon, to violence in March 2012 when a gunman opened fire outside a convenience store. A reputed gang member was arrested just last month for the killing.

Her daughter "didn't understand why this happened to her," Freeman said. "She's not this type of person, she's not in the streets or anything like that."

Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy later told reporters there were likely "strong gang overtones" to the shooting. He said it doesn't appear to be a random act of violence.

Leslie Freeman was to undergo surgery for her wrist, shattered in three places.

For now, doctors will leave the bullet in the baby.

pnickeas@tribune.com

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