CHICAGO _ The summer before he was killed, Laquan McDonald walked through Chicago's Loop to get a copy of his birth certificate with a mentor who was helping him find a job.
It marked, the mentor recalled, the teen's first time exploring on foot the bustling downtown, less than 10 miles from the impoverished West Side neighborhood where McDonald grew up but seemingly a world away from its violence.
Passers-by approached apprehensively at the sight of McDonald _ 6-foot-2 with short dreadlocks, baggy clothes and a chipped front tooth _ so the mentor coached him how to dispel negative stereotypes with eye contact and a smile.
The two had become tight after the adult opened up to the troubled youth about how he, too, had to learn to navigate the city's long-standing racial fault lines while growing up as a young black man without a father, surrounded by gangs and drugs in a poor neighborhood.
The mentor saw promise in McDonald and encouraged him to believe in himself.
Just weeks after his 17th birthday, McDonald's 2014 death on a Southwest Side street at the hands of a Chicago police officer drew little attention. More than a year later, though, that changed in dramatic fashion with the court-ordered release of a video showing the white officer shooting the black teen 16 times. The vivid images of Officer Jason Van Dyke unloading his gun on McDonald as the teen appeared to walk away with a knife in his hand has rocked Chicago in the three years since unlike any other police-involved shooting in its history.
Now, with opening statements in Van Dyke's highly anticipated murder trial expected as soon as Monday, a look back at McDonald's life shows that the odds were stacked against him since birth.
Still, despite his myriad problems, the teen possessed a sense of humor, resilience and love of family that impressed teachers, counselors, probation officers as well as a juvenile court judge.
The Chicago Tribune has reviewed hundreds of pages of state child welfare and county juvenile court records and interviewed relatives, friends and the professionals who tried to show him a better way to reveal a fuller portrait of the lanky teen with the distinctive fast-paced walk.
He was born possibly substance exposed with multiple medical problems to a 15-year-old mother who was in state care due to her own mom's drug addiction, records show. McDonald's father was absent nearly all his life because of drugs and prison.
As a toddler, McDonald shuttled between multiple homes. He found stability with his great-grandmother but grew into an angry teen who admitted to smoking marijuana each day by the time he was 11 to help keep a "smile on my face" amid the chaos that plagued his childhood.
McDonald had learning disabilities and complex mental health diagnoses. He was hospitalized three times for psychiatric issues and had repeated school suspensions, expulsions and truancies much of his life.
Arrested 26 times since the age of 13, he was in and out of juvenile detention in the last three years of his life.
