CHICAGO _ Frank Looney was named after his father, and the two were so close that they shared the same nickname too: Frank Nitty.
"He wanted to be like his pops," the elder Looney said. "We laughed every day, everything he said was funny."
The 16-year-old had just moved in with his dad and appeared to be headed down the right path, "checking the boxes" and starting at a new high school. When the boy didn't come home Saturday night, his father assumed he was at his mother's and would come home for school.
"I was going to let him have his fun weekend and then get back to business, but it didn't happen like that," he said.
Around 10 p.m. Saturday, the boy was standing outside a party in the 3400 block of West Flournoy Street when two gunmen opened fire from the bottom of the stairs. Frank was killed, and a 17-year-old girl and another 16-year-old boy were wounded.
Looney said his son had big basketball dreams, loved his six sisters and enjoyed going out with friends. "He was just a cool cat," his father said. "He just wanted to be Frank, just wanted to be free."
Jim Dorrell was the boy's English teacher before the boy transferred from Marshall Metro High School a few weeks ago. Dorrell remembers a boy with "this larger-than-life aura."
The first time he saw Looney, the teen was dancing down the hallway on his first day of high school, exuding rare confidence for a freshman.
"He was always the center of attention when I saw him, even though he was short for his age," Dorrell said early Tuesday morning outside Marshall, where he joined other striking teachers on the picket line. Cars honked as they passed. At least three police cars, sirens blaring, raced by within a few minutes of each other.
Looney was the youngest person killed over the city's most violent weekend since the three-day Labor Day holiday: At least 40 people shot, five of them fatally. Much of that violence was in the Harrison police district that surrounds Marshall in East Garfield Park.
"The entire population of students goes through trauma on a daily basis," said Stephanie Steele, a social worker who divides her week between Marshall and Collins Academy about a mile and a half away.
If there wasn't a strike, Steele would have been at Marshall on Monday morning offering grief counseling to students who knew Looney. "They want justice for the person they loved," Steele said. "It makes it hard for them to focus and really impacts their outlook on life."
One of the sticking points in the ongoing contract negotiations has been the level of social workers and nurses and special education aides at the schools. At Marshall, Steele said she is the only social worker available for students.
When a classmate dies, the students always seem know before the school tells them, she said. They'll come to Steele in groups or individually to talk.
Sometimes they write letters to the person who died. Other times students come for the space to cry or feel sad or angry. Steele said she asks them to remember something happy about the person.
Steele said it's a rare week when she doesn't offer grief counseling. Just before the strike began, she had three students dealing with trauma from the deaths of loved ones.
Students who go through trauma tend to get upset easily because they're in a heightened emotional state, the body's natural response to stress. "They almost rest in that state," Steele said. "They've been through so much trauma that they're constantly living in that mode."
This can lead to difficulty focusing in school, nightmares, not sleeping, memory loss, among other physical and mental conditions. Some students lose motivation to try in school, wondering if they or a family member will be next, Steele said.
"My students are brave warriors and it's amazing that they can ask for help," Steele said.
It's difficult for the entire school community to look at empty desks and remember former students or get ready for prom, thinking of plans that had been made before tragedy struck, she said.
"I'd be lying if I said it didn't take a toll," Steele said. "Every time we lose a kid my anxiety is heightened wondering who it's going to be next."
Dorrell said he tries not to think about it every time a student is killed, but says it's been particularly difficult for him to move on from Looney's death. "Maybe it's because he was so little and lively."
