May 25--Funeral arrangements have been set for the veteran 311 dispatcher killed by a stray bullet as she left a coffee shop near Chicago police headquarters in Bronzeville late last week.
Visitation services for Yvonne Nelson are set for 4 to 7 p.m. Friday at the A.A. Rayner Sons Funeral Home, 318 E. 71st St. A wake will take place at 10 a.m. the next day at the Martin Temple AME Zion Church, 6930 S. Cottage Grove Ave., with a funeral immediately following.
Nelson, 49, who had just completed her 14th year as a dispatcher with the city's 311 center, was shot in the chest just before 4 p.m. Friday near the Starbucks at 3506 S. State St. when a gunman opened fire on a man, believed to be the target of the shooting, who was hit several times.
Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said Nelson was a completely innocent victim.
The shooting happened as police brass were finishing a news conference to tout the arrests of dozens of gang members in a police sweep.
Nelson, of the 4900 block of South Vincennes Avenue, died at Stroger Hospital, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. An autopsy Saturday confirmed she died of her wound, and her death was ruled a homicide. The second victim, a 19-year-old man, was seriously wounded, but police had no update on his condition this week.
No arrests had been made in the shooting, police said.
News of Nelson's death was devastating for her co-workers, who recalled Nelson as an upbeat, adventurous presence at the 311 center who loved little dog figurines and longed to visit London and Paris.
"She was never a complainer. Never ever," Louis Shuttlesworth, Nelson's co-worker for nine years, said Monday. "She always smiled. She loved God. She lived life. She had fun."
Shuttlesworth, who usually relieved Nelson from duty as a dispatcher, noted the eerie coincidence, that Nelson, who sat in Seat 520, died on May 20.
Her co-workers learned of her death about 90 minutes after she left her job for the day, when a supervisor let off a muffled scream inside the call center.
"We heard a person scream as if their hands was over their mouth. Then the next thing we knew, it got louder and uncontrollable at that point," he said. At that point, his anguished boss relayed a message she got from someone she was on the telephone with.
"'They're saying it's ours. And we kept asking her, 'ours what?'" Shuttlesworth said.
"'She's saying it's our Yvonne,'" he said.
Shuttlesworth said he's upset that the death of innocents is becoming a regularity in Chicago.
"It's extremely upsetting because the person who you're aiming for isn't the one who gets killed," he said. "An innocent person always gets killed here in the city. You're trying to get the city to look good and maintain things for the city, but then in an instant, you lose it." Added Shuttlesworth: "You become numb to it."
wlee@tribpub.com
Twitter @MidNoirCowboy
