Just after midnight on Friday morning, Lamar Butler was in a crowd of people hanging out in the street just south of Cornell Square Park, according to police reports, when two men in black approached the party and fired a rifle and a handgun into the gathering.
Butler, 32, identified to the Tribune by his brother, was one of two people killed in the seven-person shooting, which police reports said may be connected to a street gang conflict, though none of the victims were listed in the report as gang affiliates. The South Side mass attack was the fourth shooting of three or more people to occur in a roughly milelong stretch of the New City neighborhood since the beginning of May.
Twelve hours later, about a dozen people stood in small groups on the block, where court records show Butler had lived for a period. Among them was Santiyo Rocquemore, who identified himself as Butler’s brother. Rocquemore, 43, said that while authorities may have described the shooting as part of a larger clash, his brother hadn’t been part of that. Most of the people out on the block Friday afternoon had grown up alongside Rocquemore, Butler and their five other siblings. Everyone was reeling, he said.
People smoked and drank and talked quietly as a little boy rode a toy car up and down the sidewalk. In a side yard, a few men sat quietly in an empty box truck. Five others had been wounded in the shooting, police said:
A 23-year-old woman was shot in her head and is listed in critical condition at Stronger Hospital.
A 54-year-old man was shot in his ankle and is listed in fair condition at Stroger Hospital.
A 32-year-old man was shot in his torso and is listed in good condition at UChicago Medicine.
A 30-year-old woman was shot in her thigh and hand and is listed in fair condition at Mount Sinai Hospital.
According to a police report, a 21-year-old man with a gunshot wound to the back later walked into UChicago Medicine, where he was listed in good condition.
One man was shot in his head, chest and leg and transported to UChicago Medicine, where he was later pronounced dead. The other male victim was shot in his abdomen and pronounced dead at Mount Sinai Hospital. Neither of the men’s identities had been formally released as of Friday afternoon.
Deering (9th) District police officers recovered 68 shell casings from a rifle and a 9-millimeter handgun at the scene, according to a police report.
The first Friday in June is National Gun Violence Day. Less than a mile from the shooting scene, at 51st Street and Racine Avenue, a group of anti-violence workers sat in a circle with U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin to discuss how they were trying to reduce firearm violence in Chicago neighborhoods.
Father David Kelly, the executive director of Precious Blood Ministries for Reconciliation, opened the meeting by noting that the shooting had occurred the night before.
Durbin said he’d heard about the shooting while he was on the Senate floor, and that it had been a reminder that while the city’s crime rate dipped to a 10-year low last year, there was still a long way to go. He recalled the 2013 shooting death of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, in whose honor he, Rep. Robin Kelly and Sen. Tammy Duckworth had introduced a “Wear Orange” resolution earlier Friday morning.
“We can’t declare victory,” he said. “We’re nowhere close to victory.”
In the meantime, the outgoing senator and Democratic whip said his role was “to continue to push for the right legislation to lessen the likelihood that this gun violence will occur.”
Kelly said the task for neighborhood anti-violence workers and residents was twofold: “to take care of one another, to grieve properly, but also to change the narrative (about the area).”
There had been a lot going on in the neighborhood of late, he said. A few weeks earlier, a group of city officials from Mayor Brandon Johnson and police Superintendent Larry Snelling to parks Commissioner Carlos Ramirez-Rosa and others had descended on the neighborhood’s Sherman Park to discuss how best to keep a lid on crime over summer, typically the most violent season of the city’s year.
The city’s event came on the heels of two other triple shootings in New City: On May 5, a woman was killed and two teenagers were seriously injured by a motorcycle-riding gunman at the intersection of South Paulina and 50th streets, authorities said at the time. Days earlier, two teens and a young man were injured in a shooting less than a mile west on 50th Street, near South Hoyne Avenue.
On Thursday, many of the people in the meeting with Durbin had walked in a “peace march” for Pedro Ramirez, a Tilden high school junior and athlete believed to have been killed by a stray bullet on May 26, while on his way to school. Students had organized the march, getting local organizations involved and convening a memorial service at the shooting site to call for charges against the shooter and remember the impact Ramirez had had as a student, athlete and friend.
Next door to Friday’s meeting with Durbin, a row of tables overflowed with orange crepe and construction paper flowers.
Hundreds of photos of people who had died in shootings sat stacked and ready to hang in a gallery 75 feet long. A volunteer folded still more flowers while Maria Pike, an anti-violence advocate whose son was killed in Logan Square in 2012, sat at a computer, fiddling with the email settings to send a press release and wondering about where to recruit “two strong men” to move a podium.
Pike, Teresa Davenport and many others were in the home stretch of preparing for a “Summer of Peace” block party to raise awareness for advocacy to end gun violence. Pike on Friday was already sporting an orange bucket hat, an orange flower behind her ear and an orange shirt — a color scheme she said she plans to stick to throughout the month of June in honor of gun violence victims and survivors.
Davenport, who is the manager for Precious Blood’s Family Forward program — a group for parents whose kids have died in shootings or are in prison — said the recent spate of shootings “makes it even more necessary to come together.” They were expecting 400 people for the event, she said, where the idea was to increase awareness but also build a sense of belonging among the people who attend.
The message, she said, was “I love you and I value you. … You are valuable.”
“If I don’t understand my value and that the community understands and supports me, then things like this happen,” she said.
Shortly after the shooting happened, around 12:40 a.m., police and paramedics raced to the intersection of 51st and Wood streets. Two ambulances sat open as officers blocked the street with police tape.
First responders walked up Wood Street giving chest compressions to a person on a stretcher, their hands coated in blood. Across the street, a man clutching a rag slowly approached the intersection with his arm linked to a police officer.
Along 51st Street, a man paced with his arm slung over his head as more ambulances arrived. First responders brought out more victims: another person on a stretcher, a white sheet strewn across their lap; a man walking with the help of a police officer; a fourth person on a stretcher with an oxygen mask over their mouth.
While authorities and firefighters surveyed the area, two women walked barefoot hand in hand through the intersection.
To the west, another woman rushed toward the scene, crying as she got closer. She passed by a small crowd that had started to gather at a street corner.
By 2 a.m., the intersection began to clear. Police laid out evidence markers and established a perimeter with more tape. Bystanders left to find their cars.
As detectives, evidence technicians and other police remained on the block, people lined the next block over, talking quietly and leaning against their cars.
The Tribune’s Armando Sanchez and Sam Charles contributed.
