In 1991, Marquise Reed’s family faced the possibility that he might die. That year, the Make-A-Wish Foundation granted the 10-year-old’s wish for a computer as he waited for a donor liver.
Twelve years after Reed had a successful liver transplant, his family is grappling with the young man’s death–not from a serious illness, as they had once feared, but from gunfire. “After all these years, for him to have a liver transplant and then for us to go through this now,” said his mother, Yvette Reed, standing outside the family’s home, three blocks from where her son was fatally shot Sunday evening.
Reed, 22, and his uncle, Ronnie Lee, 37, were driving in the 4300 block of South Lamon Avenue in the LeClaire Courts public housing complex shortly before 6 p.m. Sunday when they were involved in a car accident, police said. Reed and the driver of the other vehicle had exchanged words when someone walked from across the street and fired several shots into the crowd that had gathered, police spokeswoman Josephine Del Rio said.
Reed, of the 4600 block of South Lamon Avenue, was pronounced dead about a half-hour later in Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn of a gunshot wound to the chest, a Cook County medical examiner’s spokeswoman said. Lee, of Gary, was shot several times. He was listed Monday evening in fair condition in Christ Medical Center, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Lee’s younger brother, Mario , 35, was asleep inside the family’s home in the 4600 block of South Lamon when he got a call about the shooting. He walked down the street to find paramedics working on his brother and nephew.
The scene caused Mario Lee, who had chronic asthma, to suffer an attack. Family members say he also could have died from a heart attack because heart disease runs in their family.
“He walked by the ambulance, and he just passed out,” said Sherri Copeland, Mario’s sister.
Mario Lee later died at MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn, according to the medical examiner’s office. The official cause of death is pending a police investigation, a medical examiner’s spokeswoman said.
Police were searching Monday for the shooter, who ran off, and said the incident was gang-related. Shell casings were found at the scene, and police are investigating the type of gun used in the shooting, Del Rio said.
Relatives of Marquise Reed and Mario Lee maintained Monday that the shooting had nothing to do with gangs.
Yvette Reed said her son generally kept to himself, and in recent weeks he had talked about going back to school to get his GED. “He kept on saying there’s nothing out here in the streets,” she said.Mario Lee, who would have turned 36 on Sunday, was the father of two boys and a girl, said his eldest brother, Joe Lee, 53. Staying active by playing basketball and baseball was just two of the ways Mario tried to control his asthma, which had troubled him most of his life, he said.
