A $10,000 reward was offered for details leading to an arrest in the fatal shooting of a pastor’s grandson on the South Side.
Ra-Shaun Hood, 16, was fatally shot Friday night in the 1200 block of West 81st Street, according to Chicago police.
Officers responding to a ShotSpotter alert about 10:15 p.m. Friday found someone on the sidewalk “applying pressure” to Hood’s chest, according to a police report. Officers took over until paramedics arrived and Hood, who suffered two gunshot wounds to his back, was taken to Comer’s Children’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 10:47 p.m., police said.
Recovered video shows someone in a dark-colored car fired a handgun at Hood before driving west on 81st Street, into a gas station parking lot and then south on Racine, according to police reports.
Hood was the grandson of Mothers Opposed to Violence Everywhere founder, the Rev. Robin Hood.
Hood told the Sun-Times his grandson was someone who was “very thoughtful.”
“He was a churchgoing kid,” Hood said. “He made sure his pastor came and met me.”
Hood, surrounded by family and community activists, demanded justice and called for solutions to gun violence in Chicago at a news conference Monday morning near where his grandson was found shot.
“Your child, your daughter, your son, your mother, your brother’s blood could be next,” Hood told reporters. “Let us stand together, and let’s fight this thing the right way because there are some solutions.”
Hood warned that “anyone who is capable of committing a murder is capable of doing it again.”
“We can’t let killers sleep in our houses and walk among us, because we’re all in jeopardy,” Hood told the Sun-Times.
He said a reward shouldn’t be needed to get justice, but that the money was “a tool to get people thinking and talking.”
The Rev. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Catholic Church and the Leader’s Network each offered $5,000 for the reward.
Pfleger told reporters Monday: “There’s nobody safe in any part of the city.”
“We have to divorce ourselves from this love affair with guns,” Pfleger said. “Nobody should be allowed to shoot anybody or kill anybody and go home and eat McDonald’s and watch TV like nothing happened.”
Hood said it’s “heartbreaking and painful” to see his family impacted by gun violence when he has worked to prevent such violence in Chicago.
“It makes me say that society has let all of us down,” Hood said. “And again, it made me understand why I keep doing what I do.”
Ra-Shaun Hood was nicknamed “Tiny Man” by his family, his grandfather said. One of Hood’s favorite memories was watching his grandson “play basketball with some big guys.”
He began playing basketball when he was 4 years old when his father bought him one. He also played baseball, enjoyed swimming and received good grades in school, according to Hood.
Hood recalled his grandson’s patience and how he could sit around and bounce a ball or play games on the sidewalk, and described him as “a chess player” because of how patient he was.
Ra-Shaun Hood was the latest in a group of family members who have been killed in Chicago, according to his grandfather.
“I have brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles — killed right here in the city of Chicago,” Hood said. “They were deacons, nurses, working people that got killed right here in the city.
“We have to get the politics out of violence,” Hood told the Sun-Times. “If not, we’ll all be shot to death.”
