Feb. 28--This past Christmas, 30-year-old Shari Graham knew she needed a fresh start and chose to return to Chicago from Texas, where she had moved two years ago.
She had spent last year mourning a child who died seven days after being born on Christmas Day 2014. The child's twin brother survived.
She chose to leave her grandmother's Texas home, where she'd been living, and returned with her children to the city where she'd grown up, despite the violence and drug problems that originally drove her grandmother out. She hoped to find a job as a nurse.
On Friday, just two months after she moved with her three children, Graham was shot to death while sitting in a cab about 9:45 p.m. in the Wentworth Gardens neighborhood on the South Side. She is at least the 101st person to be killed in 2016 with the second month of the year not over yet, according to data kept by the Chicago Tribune.
"It hurts me so hard. It hurts me real hard," the grandmother, Bonita Carter, said from her Texas home.
Carter had raised Graham in her Auburn-Gresham home since Graham was 2 years old. Carter left for Texas 12 years ago, unable to tolerate the neighborhood's escalating crime.
"That was my baby. We call her 'Shari-ball,'" she said, her soft voice quivering. "Her kids gotta grow up without a mother. I just can't describe it. It's an indescribable feeling."
Since moving to Chicago, Graham had been staying with her children at her other grandmother's home on 7700 block of South Hermitage Avenue, also in the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood.
Graham was pronounced dead at 10:31 p.m. Friday at Stroger Hospital, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.
The cab was in the 3800 block of South Princeton Avenue about a half-mile south of U.S. Cellular Field, and about 8 miles from Graham's family's house, when someone fired shots outside the vehicle. It's not clear where the shots originated from, police said.
An autopsy determined that Graham died of a gunshot wound to her back. The driver of the cab drove her about 2 miles to the 4700 block of South State Street, where paramedics were called, police said. She was then taken to Stroger, where she was later pronounced dead. Police said preliminary information indicated the woman was not the intended target.
Carter heard the news of Graham's death while at a church retreat two hours away from her Killeen, Texas, home. She said Graham's sister has been staying at Carter's house since Friday, unable to leave her bed.
"I don't think she's ready to talk," Carter said.
Carter is most worried about Graham's children, though. Aside from baby Kato, Graham had a 3-year-old son, Lamar, and a 6-year-old daughter, Lashontay.
"The 6-year-old, it's already gonna be so hard on her. She loved her mother so hard," Carter said.
For now, the children are being cared for by Graham's other grandmother in a home where an anti-violence poster sits in a front window. Carter is planning to make a trip up to Chicago herself within the next couple of days.
February's homicide total is now 44, more than double the homicide total of February last year, which saw 20 people killed. After Graham's death a 102nd person was reportedly killed, police said.
The first two months of 2015 saw 52 people killed and that year ended with almost 500 homicides, according to Tribune data.
Chicago Tribune's Gregory Pratt contributed.
meltagouri@tribune.com
