May 26--Danielle Moore-Willis didn't hesitate when she heard gunfire and shouts outside her Englewood home late Monday night. She quickly dressed and ran out to help.
There, under the yellow light of a street lamp, lay a man bleeding.
"It's as if time stood still. It was only a couple people and they were talking to him, trying to keep him alert," she said. "I knew he was bleeding from somewhere, I didn't know where and I couldn't figure it out. And he was breathing. . . I remember somebody talking to me and it's just like a blur, it's like it's surreal. It's surreal."
Moore-Willis, trained in CPR, dropped to her knees and pumped the man's chest. She yelled for help. She breathed into his mouth. A police SUV pulled up next to her, two officers inside. An ambulance a few seconds later.
Moore-Willis emerged from the parkway, covered in the man's blood, as paramedics started to treat him. He wasn't talking, wasn't moving much and he struggled to breathe.
"I broke down hysterically because I had this overwhelming sense of guilt, like, I hope my efforts were enough," she said. Police said the man, 25 years old, was taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition.
The man was one of the last victims of a Memorial Day weekend in Chicago that saw 12 people killed and 44 people wounded, a toll only slightly higher than the previous weekend in the city.
Compared to the same period in 2013, shootings this year are up by about 24 percent and homicides are up by about 18 percent, police department statistics show.
The most violent neighborhood this past weekend was Englewood, where 12 people were shot between Friday and Monday.
Moore-Willis lives on a stretch of Normal Avenue in Englewood immortalized by Chicago rappers who spelled the street backwards to identify their faction of Black Disciples. Tucked behind Saint Bernard Hospital and Healthcare Center, the block is marked with gang letters B and D inside Stars of David drawn on light poles.
Looming over Normal Avenue is the Englewood Terrace Apartment complex where Moore-Willis grew up in. The neighborhood has been her home except for the time she lived with her husband while he was in the Army.
Moore-Willis is a former daycare worker who is active in ministry groups that work to curb violence. Her work brings her into close contact with the families of gunshot victims.
"But you can never get used to this, at all," she said. "You know, you can't."
She calls Chicago her Ninevah where, according to the Bible, God sent Jonah to rid the city of its wickedness.
"There's always been stuff over there ... and to feel like you got out and now you're sucked back in but you feel this overwhelming sense of purpose to help," she said. "It's just this conflicting thing because for me, the easiest thing for me would be let me move somewhere else."
As she spoke, Moore-Willis stood on Normal Avenue outside yellow crime tape. Her eyes looked tired, and she clutched her hands under her chin.
Willis-Moore's youngest child, a 10-year-old boy, had started to panic because he thought her husband had been shot. Her husband got home a couple minutes later and tried to calm everyone down.
"My eldest was up, she kept coming out and bringing me wet paper towels and I couldn't understand why she was bringing me wet paper towels," she said. "And when my husband came home, he was like, you have blood all over your face."
The wounded man had intervened in an argument between a man and a woman earlier in the evening, according to police. The other man left, came back with a gun and started shooting. He was arrested not long afterward on the West Side, police said.
Hours after the shooting, evidence technicians still had not arrived, bogged down with a dozen other shootings and homicides from earlier in the day.
The man's father -- for whom he was named -- paced the scene trying to find out what happened. He wore camouflage pants but no shirt or shoes. He had rushed to the scene when he found out what happened.
A friend of the father tried to calm him down, but was concerned about red police tape that many people associate with homicides.
"It don't look pretty man," the father said. "It don't look pretty."
A man approached the scene and shouted for police as he got closer. He said he was trying to find his "grandbaby." They let him in and, minutes later, he lifted tape as a woman and a small girl walked underneath.
"Wanna go with granddaddy? Don't like that, do you?" he asked the girl.
The girl, about knee height in a dress with short braids and bewildered eyes, shook her head slowly as she walked. She wore the woman's jacket.
"I know it," he said. "Scarin' the hell out of her, man."
