The warm, humid night that concluded Memorial Day weekend had drawn groups of teenagers outside to gather at corners, hang out with friends and celebrate the start of summer on Chicago’s South Side.
But close to 11 p.m., as the night’s socializing was winding down, a burst of gunfire sliced through the stuffy air and scattered one group of teens at the corner of 69th Place and South Dorchester Avenue. When the shots faded, 15-year-old Sharkelia Taylor, who had come back to Chicago from Gary for the holiday weekend to visit her grandmother and friends, was on the ground with a gunshot wound to her back.
Latisha Coleman, who lives across the street from the corner, heard the gunfire and then found Taylor’s cousin at her door, saying Sharkelia had been shot.
“I walked over there and saw the little girl on the [ground]. It was terrible. … She was trying to speak. I kept telling her to stop talking,” Coleman said. “She was holding my hand and I was talking to her, saying, ‘Stay with me, stay with me.’
“Then the little girl took two whole breaths and let go of my hand. I said, ‘She’s gone. She’s dead.’ “
Taylor was the youngest of several victims Monday night as the holiday turned violent in the South Shore neighborhood. Between 8 and 11 p.m., three separate shootings within 2Q miles left Taylor and 27-year-old Frederick Hogan dead and four others wounded.
Tuesday afternoon, with the weather bitterly cold and blustery, several of Taylor’s friends assembled a memorial at the corner where she had been shot, stacking stuffed animals, candles, flowers and balloons beneath posters bearing messages such as “RIP Queen Lady Sha” and “We’ll miss you, lil Sista.”
Though her friends saw Taylor roughly every other weekend since she moved to Gary to live with her mother and attend middle school, several were in tears as they remembered a young teen described as funny, smart and popular.
“She was a real down-to-earth person, this shouldn’t have happened to her,” said her friend Cassandra Peterson, 16. “It’s ridiculous that someone can’t just come outside and hang out without getting shot.”
Police and witnesses said that the shots were fired from a black Monte Carlo that sped past the corner shortly before 11 p.m. Monday. It was unknown who was the intended target of the shooting. Another woman, who was shot in the leg during the incident and taken to Stroger Hospital in good condition, was recovering at home Tuesday, her family said.
Taylor had last lived in Chicago with her grandmother, Dareyl Carter, in the 7100 block of South Woodlawn Avenue, about five blocks away from the shooting. Relatives and neighbors poured into Carter’s home Tuesday, comforting the woman who treated Taylor like a daughter.
“She was a sweet kid who senselessly lost her life,” said neighbor Barbara Williamson. “She was bright, vivacious, lovely.”
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DANGER LURKS
Neighbors near the corner where Taylor died said violence is becoming all too common as gangs clash over territory. Lakita Childs, a neighbor who left a white rose at the memorial, said things had gotten worse since she moved to the neighborhood three years ago.
