2 moms gunned down on South Side corner were not targeted, city’s top cop says, but leader believes her group is at risk

The founder of an anti-violence group which lost two members in a drive-by shooting on Friday believes her group is being targeted.

Tamar Manasseh was responding to Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson, who said Tuesday morning that two mothers gunned down while occupying a South Side corner were not the people the shooters were after.

Manasseh accused Johnson of using the notion of “gang-related” violence to minimize the deaths.

“You are saying this has nothing to do with mothers, but mothers keep getting shot?” Manasseh said. “It would be foolish if I didn’t look at this like a message to our group. If anyone is saying I shouldn’t look at this like a message they are disingenuous.”

Johnson and Mayor Lori Lightfoot, speaking Tuesday after their weekly meeting on weekend gun violence, urged everyday Chicagoans not to be scared off.

Chantell Grant, 26, and Andrea Stoudemire, 35, had spent two years working with Mothers Against Senseless Killings (MASK), a team of hands-on moms who took to the streets of Gresham and other nearby neighborhoods to make them safe for their own children and other local kids.

That’s what they were doing at 75^th Street and Stewart Avenue on Friday night, when the peacemakers became the latest victims of Chicago’s cycle of gun violence.

Just before 10 p.m., a blue SUV rolled by the corner where MASK sets up shop, and someone fired into a crowd. Grant and Stoudemire were killed. A man was grazed in the arm.

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Grant had four children. Stoudemire had three.

“From what we know right now, there’s ... no evidence to support that they were targeted because of their affiliation with that group. As a matter of fact, one of `em was shot from like a half a block away,” Johnson said after his weekly “Accountability Tuesday” meeting with Lightfoot.

“We think the targeted individual was one of the young men that was out there. He was struck by gunfire. We know he’s recently paroled, I believe, for aggravated battery. So, we believe that’s who the intended target was.”

Still, Manasseh, who founded the group, doesn’t want her members to take any chances.

“I’ve told a lot of my mothers to not wear their MASK shirts — just out of their safety,” Manasseh said. “Our mothers now know it’s a risk. But I’m still wearing mine because I am not giving up.”

It is the second time within a month a mother was hit by bullets on the corner where MASK operates. About 9 p.m. on June 25, a 23-year-old mother was shot in the face, back and leg as she stood on the corner. She survived.

Manasseh founded MASK four years ago. Local moms have been “occupying” the southwest corner of 75th and Stewart ever since, convinced their mere presence could keep their own children and neighborhood kids safe.

The mothers walk the streets, hold cook-outs, or just hang out while also offering youths counseling, healthy meals and homes for those who don’t have them.

Lightfoot called the shooting “horrifying.” The “sad and devastating” tragedy was made worse by the fact that the two young moms were doing precisely what the mayor has asked all law-abiding Chicagoans to do: get involved.

MASK was formed “to reclaim territory in a neighborhood and that’s exactly the kind of effort that we need,” the mayor said. “In order to really reclaim the streets, we need people to step up as this organization and lots of others have done over time.”

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Lightfoot said she understands the chilling impact the murders may have on community involvement. But it’s “critically important that we continue to push forward, anyway,” she said.

“If we let people who don’t care about a sense of community, about civility, about the consequences of gun violence push us into the shadows and push us into our homes for fear of what will happen, we’re never gonna get ahead of this tide. The Police Department cannot fight this fight alone,” Lightfoot said.

“There’s lots of courageous people all over the city who have been doing that for years in reclaiming the territory under their feet. ... Those kinds of efforts — incrementally, block-by-block — do make a difference and are giving people a sense of ownership and hope that is really important in helping to ... push back against the violence that is claiming way too many people.”

Johnson added: “We can’t let individuals that don’t have the morals that we have hold us hostage. We cannot do that. We have to keep fighting this fight, a unified fight. Police department, the residents, the business owners, the clergy, elected officials. We all have a role to play. We cannot let these individuals win.”

Earlier this week, Manasseh told the Sun-Times she hasn’t slept since the shooting “trying to figure out how we can stop this,” and can’t stop wondering: “Who’s next?”

John Alexander/For the Chicago Sun-Times