Former De La Salle ‘supernatural’ athlete killed in Skyway shooting

A former high school basketball and football star at De La Salle was killed and a woman wounded in a shooting Wednesday afternoon on the Chicago Skyway bridge over the Calumet River.

Elliott Brown, 25, was driving a BMW coupe southbound on the Skyway (I-90) near 98th Street about 1:30 p.m. when it was approached by a black SUV, authorities said.

Someone in the SUV opened fire, striking Brown in the BMW multiple times. A 23-year-old woman passenger was shot in the left arm, police said. The SUV then continued southbound.

Brown was dead at the scene, police said.

Brown played basketball and football for four years at De La Salle Institute, 3434 S. Michigan, before he graduated in 2008. He was described by former teammates as a “supernatural” athlete.

“Teams would game plan against him like no tomorrow,” said his former football teammate Mark Rangel. “No tomorrow.”

Rangel said that after high school, Brown played football at Missouri State University for a time before returning to Chicago after he had a son. After coming home, he played basketball for Malcolm X College.

The woman wounded in the shooting was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where her condition stabilized, police said.

Police believe the shooter and the victims had “prior contact” before the shooting.

Traffic on the southbound lanes of the Bishop Ford was snarled for hours, with outbound lanes to Indiana closed as investigators worked the scene. One inbound lane remained open.

The medical examiner’s office listed Brown’s home address in the 4000 block of South Calumet in the Bronzeville neighborhood.

Rangel, who played linebacker, said Brown rotated between quarterback, wide receiver and safety while playing for De La Salle’s football team. He stuck to wide receiver once in college.

“He was the guy that would annoy you when he’d show up on the last day of two-a-days after the team’s been killing themselves, and he’s got a starting spot, no problem,” Rangel said. “But all of that would be quickly forgotten after Week 1 when we played Curie and he’d light them up for four or five touchdowns.”

But despite coming from a rougher neighborhood and being, as Rangel described him, “the king of trash talk,” Brown had no enemies in high school.

“You knew where he was from and some of the guys that’d show up to the games to support him, you’d know what they were about,” Rangel said. “But there were no definitive enemies.”