CHICAGO _ On his way to school, the ninth-grader heard the first gunshot from a distance.
He figured it was meant for him. So he ran.
With the sound of gunfire trailing him, he made his way down the street, through an alley and to the back door of the weathered two-flat where he lives.
"I heard shots coming toward me. I didn't see any faces. I just heard 'ping, ping, ping,'" he recalled while casually browsing pictures on his cellphone.
"All the time, I was thinking, 'I want to get home.' Then I checked my body to see if I was wet (with blood) anywhere."
As Chicago tries to grapple with the carnage that claimed 786 lives last year, according to data collected by the Chicago Tribune, it is worth considering what life is like for a young man coming of age in one of the city's poorest and most besieged communities.
This is a story of a teenager growing up in an impoverished Chicago neighborhood and trying to navigate the landscape of gangs and crime at a time when the city's gun violence is at its highest since the 1990s drug wars. The Tribune is not naming the 15-year-old because he is a minor.
In his North Lawndale neighborhood, it is not uncommon to dodge a bullet on the way to school. For some young people, it is easier to not go at all than to risk their lives waiting at a bus stop.
But dropping out of school is not an option for this teen. His great-aunt, who has cared for him much of his life, sees to that. She insists that education is the only way he can break free from the cycle of poverty and violence that has plagued this West Side neighborhood for decades.
Barbara Herron, 66, wants a better life for her great-nephew than she has, always struggling to make ends meet. She wants more for him than what he sees on the streets. Young men hanging on the corner day in and day out with no job and no hope for a future, that's not the life she envisions for him.
But it's a constant struggle.
Like on the day he said he was shot at, shortly after school began last August.
"The way he was knocking, I couldn't get to the door fast enough," Herron said. "He said, 'Auntie, somebody's shooting at me.' The first thing was to find out if he was all right, and then I had to decide whether to send him back to school (that day).
"I didn't make him go back because I didn't know what this was about. He has reasons not to tell me things, but I know he has secrets. I know he has another life."
That's not uncommon for young people living at the intersection of poverty and violence.
Though less than 5 miles from the Loop _ the city's economic epicenter _ North Lawndale is littered with boarded-up storefronts, empty lots and vacant buildings that once housed the sprawling headquarters of Sears, Roebuck & Co. and thriving industries such as Zenith, Sunbeam and Western Electric.
There are many educated, working-class and professional people in North Lawndale who are raising children in stable families. But of the nearly 40,000 residents, more than 43 percent live in poverty. There were more than 280 shootings in North Lawndale in 2016 and more than 30 homicides during that time. Only Austin had more violent crime, according to the city.
The city's systemic segregation is largely responsible for the concentration of poverty in North Lawndale and other predominantly African-American communities.
"When you have economically disinvested communities, people are cut off from opportunities," said Stephanie Schmitz Bechteler, executive director of the Chicago Urban League's Research and Policy Center. "Over time, the community instability grows and trickles down to the families. When you have that, you more likely will also have symptoms of poverty, such as crime and under-resourced schools."
In impoverished neighborhoods, parents often find themselves in a tug of war with the streets. Prison, drugs and joblessness have left too many homes without a father, forcing mothers, grandmothers and aunts to fight the battles alone. Sometimes, no matter how tight the grip, a child can slip away, turning into someone even a mother no longer knows.
During a 15-month period, there have been 23 shootings and three homicides in the six-block area where Herron lives. Once her great-nephew walks out the door, she realizes that she cannot protect him. That's when the young man does what he feels he must to protect himself.
"You've got to protect yourself because you never know if someone is going to be shooting at you or hit you with a car or something," the teenager said. "Sometimes people just think you have money, and it can cost you your life. I have to look at that person like he's trying to hurt me or take what I've got.
"Because he's black like me means nothing. It's all about protecting yourself and protecting your loved ones."
The Rev. Robin Hood, a longtime North Lawndale community organizer who knows the family, said the neighborhood is engaged in a block-to-block war that has been going on for years.
"You can't label them all a gang, but they are cliques," said Hood, a former activist with CeaseFire, which deploys former gang members and ex-felons to intervene in violent feuds. "They're still doing gang stuff, but it's not over drugs. It's over personal vendettas that start on social media."
Hood said it's imperative to reach troubled teens before they fall off what he calls the "eighth-grade cliff."
"If you don't have them in check by then, they fall right off the cliff," Hood said. "And it becomes a continuous vicious cycle of violence that happens over and over again."
