Chicago ex-top cop shocked by 71-year-old woman’s slaying on street where he lived for decades

Former Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said he couldn’t believe the news about a 71-year-old woman who was fatally wounded when someone fired into her Morgan Park home over the weekend.

Johnson grew up on the block where Emma Wright was killed Sunday night. He said the area was usually “super quiet.”

“The most we worried about was garage burglaries,” he said.

Wright was in her home in the 10800 block of South Morgan Street with her grandson and his girlfriend when two gunmen opened fire from the backyard at 7:39 p.m., authorities say. A police report said the shooting was possibly “gang-related.”

The grandson was the likely target and “uncooperative” with police, a source said.

Some of the shots went through Wright’s bedroom window and hit her several times, including in the back of the head, the police report said.

Another murder happened only a block away earlier this year.

On Aug. 13, Montrell Lee, 27, was killed when Benjamin Reese fired at least seven shots into a car Lee was driving through an alley, police said. Reese, also 27, is charged with murder.

Johnson said his parents moved his family from the Cabrini-Green housing complex on the Near North Side into a home in the 10800 block of South Morgan Street in 1968, when he was about eight years old, because the area was safer.

Johnson said he bought the house from his parents in the early 1990s and lived there until becoming superintendent in 2016. He said he still owns the home, where his brother lived until his death in February.

He said he doesn’t know Wright, who lived on the other end of the block, but would wave to her and her family.

“In the past, if someone saw something suspicious they would call me,” Johnson said, adding, “People need to connect with their neighbors again. We have to come together to bring this crime down.”

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

Six people were killed and at least 32 others were wounded in shootings across Chicago over the weekend. Through Dec. 13, there have been 740 killings in Chicago this year, a 56% increase over the same period of 2019.

Johnson said he was confident that “somebody knows something” about Wright’s killing and “somebody will talk.”

Wright was a retiree who loved playing cards in her backyard and making people laugh, according to her nephew, Shawn Flowers.

Her husband and two of her three daughters have passed away.

Flowers, 49, remembered the home in years past as a hub of family activity that would hum around the holidays.

Wright was thinking about selling her house in order to downsize and had planned to visit her daughter, Kim, in Texas for Christmas, Flowers said, noting that Wright’s sole surviving daughter was “absolutely devastated.”

Another nephew, Ishchayil Bell, 45, wasn’t sure what events led to the shooting but said with certainty the bullets weren’t meant for Wright.

“Nobody would target Emma. Everyone in the community knew her. She was the classic Chicago woman, man.”

Several anti-violence activists gathered outside Wright’s home Monday night to call for anyone with information on the shootings to come forward.

“The only way we’re going to solve this is as a community,” said activist Andrew Holmes.

“Let’s get together to get these idiots off the streets,” said Marvin Edwards, head of 100 Men Standing.

Activist Tio Hardiman said the death was “totally unacceptable.”

“Every street brother in Chicago should understand one thing: It’s your duty to hold people accountable out here and make sure this never ever happens again. This grandmother should be here to spend time with her family.”