Family of an 18-year-old man charged with illegally possessing a weapon after a fatal shooting earlier this week at a North Side CTA station say they fear for his safety because media reports have falsely linked him to the shooting.
Michael Jackson, 18, of Rogers Park was expected to be released from custody Friday as the case continues after his family said they would post $1,000 bond set at a hearing where he faced a charge of unauthorized use of a loaded weapon.
The shooting that led to Jackson’s arrest occurred shortly after noon Tuesday when someone approached 20-year-old Macksantino Webb on the busy platform of the Howard Red Line station and opened fire, striking him in the neck and chest. Webb was taken to Evanston hospital but was pronounced dead a short time later.
Jackson and another person were seen running from the station after the shooting to a nearby Jewel-Osco, prosecutors said.
Officers located Jackson inside the grocery store and were directed to a backpack that a witness said they saw him hide in the store’s prepared food section. Inside, the officers found a handgun, prosecutors said, which had a round in the chamber.
However, the caliber of the gun found did not match the weapon used to kill Webb, prosecutors said.
Chicago police said the second person taken into custody has been released without charges, and the investigation is ongoing. Police wouldn’t comment further, declining to say if Jackson was still considered a suspect.
At the hearing Friday, Judge Arthur Wesley Willis said he could not consider an ongoing investigation in setting bail and said prosecutors had not provided any evidence that connected Jackson to the shooting.
That, in addition to Jackson’s lack of an adult or juvenile record, Willis said, led him to order Jackson’s bond be set at $1,000.
Ten members of Jackson’s family who attended the hearing were relieved by the news but worried about someone potentially seeking revenge against Jackson.
“Michael Jackson did not hurt anyone,” his aunt Charlotte Ford said after the hearing, adding that she didn’t know why he might have been carrying a gun.
Ford said Jackson’s family mourns Webb’s death, noting that he is a young man who was only slightly older than Jackson.
“Society says they’re grown, but they’re not. They’re still young,” Ford said. “That family lost their 20-year-old baby.
“He had tried to get away from this,” Ford said about reports that Webb had moved to Rogers Park to escape the gun violence in his neighborhood.
The Chicago Sun-Times profiled Webb in 2016 soon after he and his older brother moved into the Rogers Park home of his great uncle, the Rev. Zollie Webb of Friendship Baptist Church in Evanston, after the two boys witnessed the shooting of their cousin in Englewood.
“How many times do we have to walk behind caskets of young black men before they realize that their deaths are a waste of talent and energy?” Zollie Webb wrote on Facebook Thursday about his nephew’s death.
“My nephew was only 21 and had a 2-month-old baby girl that will never really know her father,” Zollie Webb wrote. “I am hurting to help plan his funeral and preach his final service and eulogy.”
Jackson’s family said they are concerned someone will try to hurt them or Jackson because they might believe he had something to do with Webb’s death.
“No one else should get hurt,” Ford said.
