Boy, 15, shot and killed in South Deering after incident outside school, mom says

A 15-year-old boy killed in a drive-by shooting Friday night on the Far South Side had been in a bloody fight with two other teens outside his school two weeks earlier, his mother says.

Ida Harris said Saturday she thinks the fight had something to do with the death of her son.

Deon Gilbert, 15, of the 8100 block of South Evans, was walking with a friend in the 10400 block of South Bensley in South Deering around 10:45 p.m. Friday when a minivan pulled up, and the driver shot him in the abdomen, according to police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

Harris said her son was walking to a gas station at 103rd and Torrence.

He died on the operating table at at the University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital, she said.

“I’m at a loss for words,” said Harris, 45. “This is just baffling, and I want justice. I need to find out why they did this.

“We talked all the time,” she said. “Anytime he went anywhere he called me. Anytime he left somewhere, he called me. I always knew where he was at.”

When she received calls from her son’s phone Friday night, she assumed he wanted her to pick him up at his friend’s house. But the voice on the other end was her son’s friend, telling her Deon had been shot.

Hall said her son, the youngest of four siblings, had been jumped by two teens as he left school two weeks earlier. She said he admitted he knocked out one and also beat up the other teen.

He was suspended from school for six days but returned to Butler College Prep in the 800 block of East 103rd Street on Tuesday, she said.

She said she told police to look into whether the two teens involved in that fight were involved in her son’s killing.

Gilbert was a sophomore at Butler.

“He played football for the school,” his mom said. “He loved football. He wanted to play in college and become an architect.”

Harris said she believes the shooting was gang-related but called her son “innocent.”

“I just can’t understand how this could happen to an innocent kid, a family-oriented kid,” Harris said. “He don’t hang out on the corners. He’s not that kid.”