A gang member in Chicago? I thought the guns were doing all the shooting. Update to this story.
As they prepared to bury 11-year-old Shamiya Adams — killed last week by a stray bullet — family members were relieved to hear Thursday that murder charges had been filed against the alleged shooter.
The senseless circumstances behind the shooting, however, offered them no solace.
Tevin Lee, an 18-year-old gang member, fired into a crowd of people Friday afternoon in the West Garfield Park neighborhood — retaliation for an earlier fistfight between two 14-year-old boys, police said.
One of the bullets entered a home on the 3900 block of West Gladys and hit Shamiya in the head as she prepared to microwave s’mores while at a slumber party at a friend’s house.
“I’m just glad they caught the guy . . . and we can bury my grandbaby in peace,” said Nanette Dailey, Shamiya’s grandmother. Shamiya’s twin brother, Jeremiah, is trying to understand where his sister is, she said. “We don’t really think that he understands his sister has gone to heaven, he’s just trying to be strong for his mother,” Dailey said.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday said he planned to pay his third visit to Shamiya’s mother, Shaneetha Goodloe, and called her after hearing about the charges.
“I didn’t do it just as mayor. I also did it as a father of three kids…whose own kids do sleepovers and have sleepovers, as a fellow parent to give her the strength, the notion that she’s not alone….so she knows that she has the resolve to keep going,” Emanuel said after groundbreaking ceremonies at a $500 million office tower along the Chicago River.