Watching sports on TV and bowling for hours on end–for Archie Adams, life was simple.
“He would bowl all day on Fridays and sometimes on Mondays, from the top of the morning to the bottom of the night,” said a niece, Nykki Barber.
Adams, 62, was returning to his Riverdale apartment about 12:20 a.m. Saturday from a bowling alley in Calumet City when he was beaten. He died about 13 hours later.
As police searched for leads and suspects in Adams’ killing, family members tried Sunday to make sense of it: a quiet homebody and member of a bowling league named The Diehard Strikers savagely attacked within a few steps of his building.
“Everyone’s taking it real hard, due to the fact that we can’t understand why this would happen,” said Barber, 26, who sat vigil with several family members in the hospital Saturday until her uncle died. “We understand that everyone has to go at some point, but for him to go that way, it’s amazing.”
Riverdale police said little Sunday beyond that officers responded to a call of a disturbance in the 14100 block of South Atlantic Street. When they arrived, they found Adams lying on his back in the courtyard of his building with blunt-force trauma to his head, according to a statement released by police.
Adams was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was pronounced dead about 1:20 p.m. Saturday, a Cook County medical examiner’s spokesman said.
Police declined to release additional information until Monday.
Barber said investigators told the family that robbery likely wasn’t the motive for the attack–her uncle still had his wallet, car keys and wedding ring.
“I really don’t believe [the attack] was meant for him,” she said. “Nothing was missing.”
At Adams’ apartment building, balconies overlook the courtyard, as does a security camera.
Building manager Johnnie Barker said the landlord has turned over videotape from Saturday morning to authorities.
No one answered the door Sunday morning at Adams’ second-floor apartment, where neighbors said he lived with his wife and daughter.
A neighbor who lives on the third floor of the building said she and her boyfriend were in the living room watching TV when they heard noises in the courtyard. The woman, who declined to give her name, said she pushed aside the blinds of her front window and saw a man lying there. She called 911.
“My boyfriend saw two people running away,” she said.
Barker said Adams and his family had lived in the building for about 4 1/2 years. .
“He and his wife were some of my best tenants,” Barker said.
Barber said her uncle, who married her aunt about 13 years ago, was born in Mississippi and moved to Chicago with his parents, brothers and sisters.
He had four stepchildren, a 16-year-old daughter and a son, Michael, who was murdered in 2000, when he was 18, she said. “He never quite got over that,” Barber said.
She described Adams as an “at-home person” who hadn’t worked in years because of a heart condition.
Police asked anyone with information to call 708-841-2203.
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alwang@tribune.com
