A judge on Thursday sentenced a man to 25 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to gunning down 9-year-old Janari Ricks while he was playing with friends behind the Cabrini Green town homes in August of 2020.
The killing, which came as violent crime began rising again amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, spurred mourning and outrage in a community that had worked to move beyond its notorious reputation.
During a hearing at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, Darrell Johnson pleaded guilty to murder in exchange for the 25-year term, according to court records. Prosecutors had accused Johnson of striking Janari, an unintended target, after firing in the area where the boy played in the 900 block of North Cambridge Avenue.
Janari heard the shots, turned and ran away. But he was struck in the back, a through-and-through wound, and collapsed face-first onto the ground, prosecutors said.
As a memorial grew in the hours after the killing, his parents described him as a child who made his school’s honor roll and had an easy aptitude for multiplication tables.
“He was an excellent student,” his mother, Jalisa Ford, said, at the time.
Ford told the Tribune she grew up in Cabrini Green at a time when the rowhouses were emptying out and the high-rises were coming down.
“We didn’t stick together as a community at some point. The structure was over with … we had an opportunity to fight for the land,” she told the Tribune in the wake of the shooting. “But of course the people don’t want to stick together, so we lost out.”
In the early aughts, the city began demolishing buildings in the Near North Side public housing complex, which had become synonymous with systemic problems of racism, poverty and violence.
The area has been redeveloped over the years, though it still sees spasms of violence.
