May 08--Andres Rivera was sitting at his kitchen table eating dinner Saturday in his Archer Heights home when a bullet fired from outside hit him in the head.
Rivera was pronounced dead on the scene after the shooting happened at 8:08 p.m. in the 5200 block of South Kolin Avenue, according to police and the Cook County medical examiner's office.
Police believe that the shooting was gang-related, but that Rivera was not the intended target.
At least one of the man's three sons is a documented gang member, who police believe might have been the target, police said.
Late Saturday evening police officers blocked off Kolin Avenue in front of the one-story yellow and red brick house with yellow crime scene tape as they investigated.
The front door's glass window was shattered.
A group of more than two dozen family members, friends and neighbors gathered at the south edge of the crime scene. They stood in groups on the sidewalk. Some spoke in Spanish quietly, some wept.
About two hours after the shooting, Rivera's grieving wife showed up at the crime scene, screaming at her son and friends who gathered nearby about the life the couple shared for 40 years.
"He worked!" the woman screamed, in Spanish. "I worked! I didn't come here to ask for anything from anyone!"
The two had worked, the woman screamed, to raise a family and eat.
A large crowd gathered outside the house. Some police stood by their cars, parked in the middle of the street, while other officers looked for clues. She kept screaming.
"We never did anything to anybody!" the woman yelled, in Spanish. Her breathing was heavy and rapid.
"To anybody!" the woman repeated, getting louder with each syllable. "To anybody!"
At one point, the woman started arguing with a man in the crowd who said, "It's nobody's fault."
"I told you!" she shouted back. "Don't touch me!"
She said to the man, "I told your cousin, too," and cursed at another woman. The people gathered at the scene told her to calm down and led her away from the crime scene. Soon her sobbing and screams couldn't be heard.
After Rivera's wife stopped screaming, a man standing steps from police officers made a phone call.
"It's me," the man said. "They shot my dad. They blasted the house."
One of the man's sons walked up to a group of detectives in the middle of the street. He told them he saw a truck pass by outside that could he believed was the shooter's vehicle.
He said he was close with his father and that they would visit casinos together.
"So when my dad went like this" -- the man tilted his head to his side -- "I thought he was (expletive) around."
Some longtime neighbors were not surprised to hear that a shooting happened at the home.
A man stepped up to Jan Jasek, who has lived in the area for 20 years and was smoking a cigarette outside the crime scene, away from the gathered group of family members.
He asked Jasek what was going on. He had just moved to the block in January to raise his family away from the gun violence he grew up around in the nearby McKinley Park neighborhood.
He said he talked to the alderman on occasion about issues in the neighborhood.
"There have been shootings. And nothing," the man said. "I thought it's supposed to be quiet here."
"A month is gonna go by, and you'll see, it's gonna be the same (expletive)," Jasek said.
"They don't care," the man replied. "... (But) I care about my family."
The man walked away.
"Well, get used to it," Jasek told him.
