June 01--The gray sedan was parked in the ambulance bay of the hospital, its doors open and bullet holes just above and below the driver's side window.
Minutes earlier, 15-year-old Fabien Lavinder was in the car on 89th Street when someone stepped from an alley near Commercial Avenue and shot him in the chest, police said. The driver took the boy to Advocate Trinity Hospital, where he died shortly before 11 p.m. Tuesday.
Fabien was the 66th and final homicide last month, the deadliest May in Chicago since 1995 when 75 were recorded, according to police department records. He was among nearly 400 people shot last month.
The month's toll was fueled by a Memorial Day weekend that saw six killed and 63 wounded, and a Mother's Day weekend when more than 50 people were shot, eight fatally, in the most violent weekend since September. That brought the total number of people shot in Chicago so far this year to more than 1,500. At least 250 of them died.
In 1995, there had been 320 murders at this time, police data show. A closer month for comparison is May 1998, when there were 65 murders for the month and 269 so far that year -- not much higher that this year's total, according to department data. There were a total of 704 murders that year, police said.
Chicago police have said the violence has been stoked by gang conflicts and a proliferation of guns, mixed with weak gun law enforcement. The department has blamed most of the violence on a core group of about 1,300 people, whom they have used data analytics to pinpoint. The department has labeled them "strategic subjects."
Police provided no motive for Fabien's shooting. His family said they had no idea why anyone would shoot him and said they have seen enough of the street violence.
"It really does make me sick. I want to leave Chicago,'' said Fabien's mother, Ericka Wright, 45. "We are ready to go."
The boy's grandmother Faye Lavinder added, "I don't know what this city has come to when you have 66 shootings in the weekend. Sixty-six people shot. You never think of yourself as being a victim. But when it hits home, it hits hard.
"We can fight disease and cure this and cure that," she said. "Someone needs to cure the land ... the city."
Fabien had been out with two friends in Calumet City on Tuesday night and were dropping off one of the friends when the shooting occurred in the 2900 block of 89th Street, according to the family.
"Someone came up to the car and shot my son," Wright said.
Fabien at first didn't know he had been shot, his family said. As he started bleeding, his friends drove him to the hospital, slapping his face and throwing water on him to keep him awake, the family said.
"Before they knew it, his eyes rolled in the back of his head and it was over with," Wright said.
Wright said she was at home sleeping when one of Fabien's eight siblings, a daughter, shook her awake.
"Mom, mom, Fabien got shot," she told Wright. She jumped into her car and raced to Trinity Hospital. "I was praying on the way there that it wasn't that bad. I couldn't say goodbye to my baby."
Police wrapped yellow crime tape around the sedan after Fabien was taken into the hospital. More than a dozen relatives and friends stood near the emergency entrance. They hugged, cried and smoked cigarettes.
A man in a black T-shirt and jeans walked back and forth on the sidewalk across from the hospital. He held his head in his hands as he sobbed.
"We should have just stayed in the 'burbs, man," he said to no one in particular. "We should have just stayed in the 'burbs. ... This is bogus."
A woman in a gray T-shirt and long jean shorts walked out of the emergency room and started crying and breathing heavily. She and other relatives and friends walked up to the man in the black T-shirt.
"He was in that car?" she asked, pointing at the sedan. "And they just shot it up?"
The man nodded yes.
The woman's wailing grew louder. She said the 15-year-old was her brother. A woman in a white T-shirt put her arms around her shoulders, consoling her.
The family said Fabien loved playing video games and would often ride his bike up and down the street. He couldn't wait to drive.
"He loved my macaroni and cheese,'' said his grandmother, who saw him Monday when he came over for something to eat. "He was an awesome grandson."
Fabien was "a respectable child," his mom said. "My baby is gone. Oh my God, my baby is gone."
