April 13--Karen Winters knows how easily boys are drawn to a life of violence in the Homan Square neighborhood.
But she still can't understand how her 16-year-old nephew ended up shot to death after allegedly confronting a Chicago police officer with a gun Monday evening.
"Once again, we're looking at environment, this community. How some of these young boys are just plagued with certain influences," Winters said Tuesday. "But not to this extent, by no means."
Police say the officer shot Pierre Loury after stopping a car suspected of being connected to an earlier shooting.
Officers pulled the car over around 7:40 p.m. in the 3400 block of West Grenshaw Street in the Homan Square neighborhood, according to Chicago Chief of Detectives Eugene Roy. Loury jumped out and ran away, and an officer followed, he said.
"(Officers) attempted to stop the car, at which time the offender fled from the car, with one officer in pursuit," Roy said on the scene shortly before 10 p.m. "A foot pursuit ensued, during the course of that pursuit, it led to an armed confrontation between the offender and the officer, resulting in the officer firing shots with his service weapon, striking the offender."
Loury was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital and pronounced dead at 8:27 p.m., according to the medical examiner's office. He lived in the 3600 block of West Grenshaw Avenue, not far from the shooting scene.
An autopsy showed the boy suffered a gunshot wound to the chest.
No officers were injured, Roy said.
A weapon was found on scene and was taken into evidence, he said. An alley between Roosevelt Road and Grenshaw was blocked with red evidence tape, and an evidence marker on Roosevelt showed where a gun magazine lay on the ground.
On Tuesday, family and friends of the boy gathered at the two-flat apartment building in East Garfield Park where his mother lives.
Loury's mother, Tambrasha Hudson, cried loudly on the front porch, tears streaming down her face, as relatives consoled her. The name "Pierre" was tattooed in cursive on her neck.
"Everything they said on the news is not the truth," said Hudson, her voice choked up. "It is not the truth. It's not the truth.
"It's sad!" she said repeatedly. "My baby was 16, not 30. My baby was 16! Sixteen!"
Pierre's grandmother Catherine Hudson told the Tribune she was sleeping when Hudson called to tell her the teen had been shot by police. The grandmother said she was thinking the worst "but praying for the better."
His family said Loury was the oldest of five children, an aspiring rapper who attended Community Christian Alternative Academy in the West Side's Lawndale neighborhood.
"He's a typical Chicago teen male, no different than any other young man living in this city, facing some of the same challenges and trials and tribulations," Winters said in the vestibule of the two-flat, the front door squeaking as relatives walked in and out of the building.
Winters said she couldn't see her great-nephew being the type to carry a gun. She described Loury's past brushes with the law as "small minor incidents," nothing that would rise to the level of a police officer having to shoot him.
Tuesday night, more than 100 people gathered at the scene where Loury was killed for a vigil sponsored by groups including Black Lives Matter Chicago and the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. As the time of the vigial approached, a woman tied metallic red and blue balloons to a black iron fence near the intersection of Central Park Avenue and Grenshaw Street.
A woman tied metallic red and blue balloons to a black iron fence near the intersection of Central Park Avenue and Grenshaw Street. Nearly 100 people gathered on the sidewalk at the corners of the intersection, some spilling onto Grenshaw Street.
The crowd chanted "justice for Pierre" gathering near the middle of the street. Some people held up a fabric poster that had faces of young black people who have been killed be police.
Loury, his mother and his grandmother were mentioned in a 2000 Tribune story about the high rate of truancy at Rezin Orr High School, where his mother attended. In the story, Tambrasha Hudson, then an 18-year-old junior at the West Side high school, said she missed school for a number of days to care for her then-infant son.
At the time, Hudson said Loury's asthma attacks had gotten worse and she needed to get him to a doctor.
"It's not like I'm just out hanging in the streets," she told members of Orr's truancy crew who stopped by her home at the time. "My baby needs me at home. That's where I'm going to be, school or not."
A statement from Police News Affairs said the officer involved "will be placed on routine administrative duties for a period of 30 days," a procedure initiated last year for all police-involved shootings.
Tribune reporters Liam Ford and Grace Wong contributed
