Feb. 12--"We're not going to let her go there. She really doesn't want to live in the city where her sister died."
-- David O'Connor, father of murder victim Aaren O'Connor, on why Aaren's younger sister, who has been accepted at Loyola University Chicago, likely won't enroll there.
Aaren O'Connor had reason to think she was safe, sitting in her car Friday evening on the 2000 block of West 21st Street. She lived there, in a middle- and working-class neighborhood called Heart of Chicago, nestled between the Eisenhower, Dan Ryan and Stevenson expressways. You could say it's a typical slice of Chicago, spiced with all the excellent Italian restaurants on South Oakley Avenue.
O'Connor was chatting on the phone with her family back in San Diego. Maybe she didn't feel the bullet that pierced her skull. "She was having trouble speaking," her father told a Tribune reporter. "She didn't know where she was. She kept saying her head hurts, her head hurts. I thought maybe she was having a stroke or something."
In truth Aaren O'Connor was dying, just as some 400 or 500 other homicide victims will die in Chicago this year.
We write often that one killing is too many, no matter the age or the gender or the race or anything else that distinguishes each victim. As one homicide touches Chicago, every homicide should touch Chicago.
But these relentless body counts in the hundreds? And rising again this year after an increase in 2015? Where's the public fury?
We know how hard many people work to drive that body count down. Whether they intercept guns or capture criminals, whether they volunteer for after-school programs or run community athletics, whether they award foundation grants or mediate disputes between gangs, they're all in it together. The Chicago that is routinely shredded by blasts from guns or slashes from knives is their Chicago. Our Chicago.
Aaren O'Connor's father didn't blame Chicago. To the contrary, he spoke of his daughter's love for her adopted city. He spoke of the money he's raising in his daughter's name for at-risk children here. He spoke of all the "very nice, very kind words" from people consoling his family. "I want her name and her voice to be the impetus for bringing all this violence to an end," he said. "I know that's asking a lot."
Yes it is. The city chronologically known to the world for its cataclysmic fire, its roaring factories, its big shoulders, its world's fairs, its Prohibition gangsters and its skyscrapers -- one high-leaping basketballer included -- increasingly is known for all the young lives exterminated here every year.
David O'Connor has lost one daughter to the violence that is reshaping what parents and prospective employers and potential residents think of Chicago. No wonder he doesn't want to send a second daughter here, as he sent Aaren here a year and a half ago. And surely he isn't alone in his second thoughts about Chicago.
Chicagoans should be alarmed far less by this city's increasingly bullet-riddled reputation than they should be alarmed by each and all of these homicides. Again, one ... is ... too ... many. That said, Chicagoans who want their city to retain and attract the Aaren O'Connors -- constructive people of energy and skill -- ought to know that with every slaying, "Chicago" becomes a synonym for "murder."
Who killed Aaren O'Connor? Our surmise, from what her father says police told him and from other sources, is that someone who was being chased turned and fired at his pursuers.
This killing weakens the Heart of Chicago, but also the heart of Chicago. Each of us who survives Aaren O'Connor has to appreciate that the world is curious about Chicagoans: When will you people, in David O'Connor's words, bring this violence to an end?
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