CHICAGO _ There was a moment when it appeared 11-year-old Robert "Yummy" Sandifer might escape with his life.
Standing just 4-foot-6 and weighing only 68 pounds, he was an unlikely triggerman for the Black Disciples street gang and was on the run after killing his 14-year-old neighbor Shavon Dean days earlier. On this hot last night of August in 1994, Yummy spotted a police car rolling through his Roseland neighborhood and ducked out of sight.
He finally ended up at the home of a neighbor and said he wanted to reach his grandmother, one of the few people he trusted to be with him when he surrendered to police _ a troubling prospect for the leaders of his Black Disciples gang, police theorized.
The neighbor left Yummy on her porch for just a moment when a fellow gang member, 14-year-old Derrick Hardaway, suddenly appeared in a gangway. In an instant, the two boys were gone. Less than an hour later, Yummy's lifeless body was found in a viaduct several blocks away.
Yummy, a nickname he got for his love of sweets, had been shot twice in the back of the head.
"I completely lost it," the neighbor later said. "All I could think of was I almost saved this kid's life."
Yummy Sandifer's story still resonates in Chicago 25 years after his disturbing journey from executioner to executed was splashed on television sets and magazine covers across the country as the latest example of the city's savage gang warfare.
The boy's story _ a home life that bred little but anger, a record of more than 30 arrests before reaching his teens _ was a reminder of deep cracks in the system that, some argue, have never been repaired.
"There's a lot of Yummy Sandifers out there," said Patrick Murphy, a longtime Cook County public guardian who represented Yummy before his death and is now a Juvenile Court judge. "Not all of them are murdered after doing a killing at the gang's behest. He might be slightly younger, but there are a lot of young kids out there that the gangs mobilize to do their dirty work for them and it's still going on."
Shootings and homicides are far below what they were back then. In 1994, Chicago saw 930 homicides, up 9% over the previous year, according to a Police Department report that cited "street gang violence and altercations" as the most common triggers. In 2018, the city finished the year with 565 homicides.
But in the small corner of Roseland where Shavon and Yummy were murdered, not much has changed. The area has seen little investment by the city. The home where Yummy once lived has been bulldozed, like other vacant homes in the neighborhood.
Shavon's mother, Deborah Dean, said she has lost three nephews to gun violence since her daughter was killed.
But Dean said she still feels some camaraderie in the neighborhood, finding support from old friends and neighbors. "The community is what you make it."
