CHICAGO _ There was a time when Deonta Howard's family worried whether he would ever want to play in a park again.
After all, Deonta was just 3 when he was shot as he played "Ring Around the Rosie" at Cornell Square Park in the fall of 2013. Two gunmen sprayed the basketball courts with an AK-47, injuring 13 people in one of Chicago's worst shootings.
Six years after the eruption of gunfire at the park in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, the last of the seven men convicted in connection with the gang revenge shooting was finally sentenced earlier this month to prison.
Despite its bloody history, the sprawling park at 51st and Wood streets remains a vital resource for its South Side neighbors, a place of optimism and pride, community activists say.
Craig Chico, the president and CEO of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, credited current leadership at the park and a collaboration of neighborhood groups _ soccer teams, regularly scheduled anti-violence events that bring movies, cookouts and an upcoming Halloween Fest _ for helping to maintain calm.
Not that violence in the neighborhood doesn't remain a concern, but Deonta, for one, still enjoys regularly going to the park. The boy with the scar on the right side of his face _ a constant reminder of the bullet that hit his cheek that night _ recently attended a back-to-school event there, playing in the bouncy house and at a petting zoo. Now 9, he also went to summer camp at the park.
It's a welcome respite for a mother trying to keep her child engaged in the world and off electronic devices.
"It should be a place where you can be a kid. It's a nice park, and I hate for that to have happened, giving the park a bad name. ... Other kids are probably scared to go out and play," said Deonta's mother, Shamara Leggett, 30. "Parks are important. Nowadays kids are stuck to video games. The park is where they can be themselves and meet people."
