After having to scrounge for details on the fatal shooting of her son last month with little help from police, Latoya Smith said she is still left with unanswered questions.
“It’s been a very, very horrible experience. They (police) have not been telling me anything. They didn’t even come and tell me that my son was shot,” Smith said. “Police, right to this day, have yet to call me. I’ve been calling them.”
Her son, Quinton Hendricks, was critically wounded just before 11:30 a.m. Aug. 22 during what she heard was a “robbery gone wrong” in the 13000 block of South King Drive in West Pullman.
Hendricks, 30, was standing outside when someone among four people in a parked car began shooting then fled the scene, according to Chicago police.
He died Sept. 4 of multiple gunshot wounds, and his death was ruled a homicide, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
She didn’t know her son was shot until she received a phone call from one of his friends the day of the shooting.
“Next thing I know, I get on Facebook, I’m seeing pictures of my son laying on the ground and an officer trying to resuscitate him,” Smith said.
She called hospital after hospital to find out where her son was taken. Smith’s sister got in contact with a police officer who said Hendricks was taken to University of Chicago Medical Center.
But once they got to the hospital, “They wouldn’t let me see my son; we had to wait outside. It was a horrible ordeal through the whole thing. It was terrible,” Smith said.
She was able to see her son after 9 p.m., about 10 hours after the shooting.
Smith said she has heard from a Chicago police detective whom she called and from Hendricks’ friends and other acquaintances that police have identified a suspect but have not located him.
More than a month after the shooting, Smith is still left with several questions, including why an arrest hasn’t been made, why it took a phone call from her son’s friend to find out he had been shot and why her son was gunned down that day.
She remembers her son as a good person who made people laugh and who loved his four children — three girls and one boy, ages 6 to 10.
Hendricks also loved music, his mother said. He was on the Jesse White tumbling team as a kid, and he did some dancing.
“He knew there was nothing he couldn’t do,” Smith said.
He was the oldest brother to three siblings — a sister and two brothers, with whom he was “very playful and active” with while growing up, his mother said.
Tuesday, police said no arrests have been made and area detectives are investigating the attack. They said they could not confirm whether a suspect had been identified.
