Kevin Davis loved sports and got the chance to play basketball for a magnet high school on the West Side.
Tuesday afternoon, the 15-year-old was leaving Michele Clark High School in South Austin when he was shot several times and died less than an hour later, according to Chicago police.
“He was a good young man,” the boy’s grandmother Sharoylnn Turner said. “He helped his mother out with his little sister. He looked up to his uncles.”
Chicago police reported no one in custody as they appealed to the public for help.
“If anybody has any information, big, small, anything at all, please contact the Chicago Police Department,” 15th District Cmdr. Andre Parham told reporters hours after the shooting. “We all have our hearts broken by what happened.”
Davis was near a sidewalk in the 5100 block of West Harrison Street when he was shot multiple times around 3:15 p.m., police said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he died less than an hour later.
“They did not need to shoot my grandbaby all those times,” Turner told the Sun-Times.
Davis is among 35 children 15 and younger to be killed in Chicago this year. He is the third person to be killed in the Austin neighborhood over the last week, according to data kept by the Chicago Sun-Times.
Three months ago, three teens — two 17-year-olds and a 19-year-old — were shot blocks from the high school.
Over this past weekend, two men were shot to death and a woman was critically wounded while driving less than a mile away. One of those killed was an aspiring actor.
Still, Jadine Chou, chief of safety and security for Chicago Public Schools, said Michele Clark is considered a safe school, describing it as “a shining star” in Chicago and one that CPS sees as an example for the district.
“It’s not something that we see, these situations would be very extraordinary,” she said.
She said the school would be provided with grief counseling on Wednesday as well as extra security.
Parham provided few details of the shooting, including whether Davis may have been targeted.
“It’s a tragedy, I’ve been in this job 26 years, and it doesn’t get any easier,” Parham said. “You hate to see anything happen to children in our community. It’s mind-numbing. You’re tired of seeing things like this.”
