A 15-year-old boy shot and killed in the West Town area was remembered Wednesday as an all-star football player and “all-around good guy.”
Caleb Westbrooks was in the 800 block of North Greenview Avenue about 1:15 p.m. Tuesday when someone approached and opened fire, striking him in the chest and arm, Chicago police said. He was pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital.
Westbrooks was a freshman at Rauner College Prep, according to a post from the school’s principal.
“Caleb was a 9th grader with so much personality,” the statement read. “He loved to crack a joke and always brought positivity and light to his classmates and teachers. Caleb touched so many lives in his time at Rauner.”
Westbrooks played football for the Garfield Park Gators and was a wide-receiver for the Illinois All Stars team, where he met head coach Neil Williams.
“He was a comedian,” Williams said. “I called him Sinbad because he reminded me of the comedian. But he didn’t have a clue who Sinbad was. He had to google it to figure out who he was. He was a fun kid.”
Westbrooks was a hard worker and often helped the other kids on the team, Williams said.
“Whatever I asked of him he did,” he said. “If someone needed a stand-in in another position, he was willing to do that.”
About an hour before Westbrooks was killed, a 16-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl were shot in Englewood. No arrests have been reported in either shooting.
More than half of the nine people hit by gunfire in Chicago Tuesday were 17 or younger.
