Mother’s 3rd child a victim of Chicago violence: ‘He was my last baby. I want justice’

Patricia Pearson has lived Chicago’s violence. Not like those of us shaking our heads from a distance, but up close and personal.

It has stalked her — nearly claiming the life of her 12-year-old daughter, Aisha Pearson, in a 1995 shooting in the 3400 block of West Monroe. Her daughter survived, living with a bullet lodged in her shoulder until her death in a car accident in 2005.

In 1999, Chicago violence then claimed the life of Pearson’s 26-year-old son, Eric Fluckers, in a shooting in the 300 block of South Lotus Avenue.

And this month, it came for the last of her three children, Venyon Fluckers, 43, a father of three, whom police said was killed in a July 11 shooting in the 300 block of North Ashland Avenue, in another violent summer weekend that saw 13 people killed, 64 shot.

The violence continued unabated this past weekend, with seven killed, 57 shot as of Sunday evening.

“My heart is heavy. He was my last baby,” said Pearson, 67, of the West Loop.

“He was on his way to my house,” she said, hours after leaving the morgue, where she identified her son’s body two days after the murder.

“I didn’t get justice in Eric’s killing or Aisha’s shooting. I was too emotional to push,” said the inconsolable mother, dissolving into tears. “This time I want to know what happened. And I’m trusting and believing and hoping police will do their job and find out.”

The Great Migration brought Pearson’s grandparents to Chicago from Mississippi. Born in Mississippi, Pearson was 3 when the West Side became home to her parents and their four children. She married, divorced, had three children. She worked in the banking and insurance industry many years, transitioning into the home care industry after a disability.

It was in November 1995 that her daughter, then 12, was shot, sitting in the car with two women outside her uncle’s home, waiting for a family friend to come out and take them to the movies. Her daughter said she saw a man in a ski mask approach with a gun drawn.

The child opened the door to get out, and the man shot up the car, striking all three inside. Thankfully, all survived. Doctors said one of the two bullets that struck Aisha was too close to her spine to try to remove. The shooting was never solved.

“When I got the call, a neighbor rushed me down there. My baby was laying on the concrete steps, shot twice. One woman was shot in the jaw, the other, shot in the side,” Pearson recounted.

“But let me tell you how it was written up. The media said the shooting was drug related — that it was a rival, shooting at a drug dealer. My daughter was 12, a good girl who had never missed a day of school. That’s how police color these things, and how the media does us.”

Aisha lived with that bullet in her shoulder until the tragic day on March 1, 2005, when the 21-year-old was killed driving from Chicago back to Remington College in Nashville, Tenn.

But before the loss of Aisha, Pearson had lost her first son to Chicago violence on April 5, 1999. Eric Fluckers had gotten into a physical fight on the street with another young man, whose cousin showed up, exited a car with a gun, and shot and killed Fluckers.

“The young man that killed my son initially was charged with first-degree murder but claimed self-defense, got off and never served a day in jail,” Pearson said.

“My son never had a chance against a gun. I told the state’s attorney who let him go, ‘You don’t care no more about this young man than you cared about my son, because you didn’t lock him up to give him a chance to think about what he did.’ But the Lord gave me the chance to tell the young man I forgave him,” the mother said.

“I was at the store, and I heard someone call his name out. I walked over, told him I was Eric’s mother and asked if he had any remorse for killing my son. His friends started pulling him away, and I told him, ‘I forgive you. But you gotta fall on your knees and ask God to forgive you because it could happen to you, too,’” Pearson recounted.

“And it did. On May 10, 2000, exactly a year and one month to the day my son was killed, I got a call the young man who killed him had been murdered.”

Last week, the news that Chicago’s violence had claimed the last of her three children was brought to her at a funeral. Police found her son’s I.D. on him and contacted one of her son’s own three children. Several family members then went to the funeral to get Pearson.

Provided

“When my granddaughter came in, I took one look at her face and knew something was wrong. I said, ‘What is it? Tell me.’ She just shook her head and said, ‘I can’t, Grandma,’” recounted Pearson.

“When we got outside and I saw more family members, I just knew,” she said through tears. “I said, ‘Don’t tell me something’s happened to my last baby.’ She said, ‘Grandma, he’s dead.’ I just fell to my knees, screaming, ‘Jesus! No! No! What did I do? Why? Why?’”

Police said her son, an over-the-road truck driver who lived in the Austin neighborhood, was found on the street with multiple gunshot wounds to the chest at about 1:32 a.m. and pronounced dead on the scene. An autopsy ruled his death a homicide. Chicago Police Area 3 detectives are investigating.

It’s easy to shake our heads from a distance but impossible to understand the impact of Chicago’s violence unless you live in neighborhoods where it stalks you, notes Pearson.

For this mother, and for so many Chicago families, the violence is up close and personal.

“When is Chicago going to get a handle on the violence claiming our children’s lives? My heart has been heavy for the babies killed this summer, a 20-month-old, 3-year-old, 10-year-old, 13-year-old, on and on. It must stop. It has to stop,” Pearson sighs.

“Why are there so many guns out here? I can’t even look at the news anymore. I’m tired. But this time I want justice.”