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One of the 3 people killed this weekend . Unreal. Glad to see the police think he wasn't targeted.
At first, Antonio Brown thought the shots that killed his 7-year-old son were just more fireworks. But then people started yelling, "They shot your son," and he saw Amari collapsed on the ground.
"He was just down. He wasn't crying, he was speaking. 'Daddy, daddy,' " Brown said Sunday, sitting around the corner from where his son was shot hours before in the Humboldt Park neighborhood and still wearing clothes stained with the boy's blood.
Brown said a friend drove him and Amari to the hospital. "I picked him up and put him in the car. I was in the back seat, I was talking to him the whole time. I was like, 'You cool, I know you cool.' "
"Yeah, I'm cool. I'm cool," Amari answered, according to Brown.
Brown said he feared his son was slipping away as they rushed for help. "He foamed at the mouth a little bit. And then I felt him get a little heavy, so I'm like, we got to do something fast."
Amari had stopped talking by the time they arrived at Stroger Hospital, and Brown handed him to the doctors and nurses.
"I knew he was gonna be OK. I knew he was," Brown said. "He cool. He told me he was cool."
But about 40 minutes later, a doctor came out and said Amari was dead.
Recounting the shooting at his home in the 1100 block of West Harding Street, Brown said he had always seen so much of himself in the boy.
"It was just me all over again," Brown said, tearing up as he raised his hands behind his head. "That's me all over again."
The shooting happened shortly before midnight and also wounded a 26-year-old woman, whose condition was stabilized at Stroger Hospital, according to Officer Ron Gaines, a police spokesman.
No one was in custody Sunday, and police have released no description of the gunman.
Police said they do not think the woman or the boy were the intended targets and were looking into whether the gunman was aiming at someone else on the block. Sources said the area has been rife with gang conflicts.
Amari was among the victims of a burst of violence across Chicago over an eight-hour stretch from Saturday night through Sunday morning. In all, three people were killed and 27 were wounded.
Amari had been riding his scooter up and down his grandmother's West Side block earlier in the day Saturday while his family and neighbors celebrated the holiday grilling and enjoyed each other’s company. Brown picked him up to watch fireworks at a friend's house, according to the family.
The shooting happened about five minutes after the two arrived at the house as dozens of children played out front, Brown said. It was difficult to distinguish the shots from the fireworks, he said.
"When it happened, it ain't like everybody ran," Brown said. "Nobody even run because we didn't know what was going on."
Brown paced the hallway at Stroger Hospital as the doctors worked on Amari. Just outside, the boy's mother, Amber Hailey, collapsed in a ball, her knees on the ground, an arm raised in prayer.
"You took him from me," she said, sounding as if someone had punched her in the stomach.
Hailey, 28, was still praying hours later back at her home in the 500 block of North Drake Avenue, a mile from where her son was gunned down.
"Lord Jesus, give me strength," she said, pacing in front of the house. "Have mercy on me."
She clutched her son's SpongeBob SquarePants pillow and his favorite Ninja Turtles doll, at times burying her face in them and crying.
"My baby loved cars," Hailey sobbed. "He loved everything. He loved his motor scooter. He wanted to ride it yesterday. He loved Ninja Turtles. He loved cheese. He loved yogurt. He loved candy. My baby would do anything for some candy."
Sherry Rieves, 52, a cousin, said Amari loved to stream YouTube videos on his tablet and would always ask to play with someone's phone. Amari had two younger brothers, a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old.
"He was like the man of our house," Rieves said. "The only man in our house."
He struggled in first grade at Leif Ericson Scholastic Academy. When he found out last month that he had passed, he texted all of his friends and family, his relatives recalled, laughing.
"I made it y'all," his mother recalled the text, wiping away tears. "He was so bad at school, they had to trick him."
Amari loved "bopping" to DLow and Lil Kemo. "He had like an old soul, that's why," Rieves said. "He had a sense of humor, that's all. He was funny."
When Amari learned how to use the microwave, he started to eat waffles and syrup in the middle of the night, Rieves said.
He also insisted on wearing the same Burberry shirt, even though he had outgrown it, his mother said. "Mari, that shirt is too little,'" his mother would tell him. "He didn't care, he didn't care. He just wanted to put it on. He was a bug."
Andrina Hailey, the sister of Amari's mother, said the little boy had "a very big personality. It's a waste."
When his father picked him up Saturday, Amari was dressed in a brand-new white outfit that his mother had recently bought at Macy's.
Hours later, family members heard he had been taken to the hospital. The family's first hope was that it was just an accident with fireworks.
Then they heard he had been shot. The bullet hit his side and pierced his liver, lungs and kidney, according to his third cousin, Debra Crews, 58. "The doctor said he lost way too much blood," she said.
Amber Hailey ran out the room when the doctor said he had died.
"I prayed so hard yesterday in the hospital," she said. "I was on my knees. I was praying, 'Mercy Lord Jesus.' He didn't ask for that.
"Treasure you all kids," she added. "Keep your kids with you, baby, keep 'em with you. Keep 'em with you."
Later Sunday, the family gathered at the scene of the shooting and pleaded for the violence to stop.
"This time it was my little cousin. Next time it could be yours. Yours. Or yours," said Michael Singleton, pointing into the crowd. "There has to come a point in this city where this stops. He was 7 years old. There's not much a 7-year-old can do to anybody.
"At some point we have a decision in this city that this type of violence has to stop," he continued. "And until that happens, all of y'all will be back out here next week on another corner filming the same thing from somebody else saying exactly what I'm saying."
Diamond Trusty, 18, a cousin of Amari, cried as she recalled her loss to gun violence.
"A few years ago, I went to three funerals a week from my friends who were killed from gun violence," she said. "And ever since then, I tried so hard...I'm the last grandchild. All I have is my little cousins and my family.
"Amari...he was my little brother! Oh God," she said. "Amari...he was such a curious creative child. He was our everything."
The Rev. Ira J. Acree, a pastor from the West Side, said a $1,000 reward was being offered for any information about the gunman.
"We must get this person off the streets," he said. "That person is a coward to take this innocent life."
_________________
Proud member of the white guy grievance committee
It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.
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