The death of a child is heartbreaking, no matter how the short life was lost. There is no such thing as closure, many parents say. And even in cases of terminal illness or accidents that can be explained through science and logic, there really are no words that can provide comfort or answers.
Murders of children that go unsolved are especially devastating. Surviving parents and families are burdened with an extra layer of confusion and pain knowing very little of why their loved ones were killed while the culprits remains at large.
These grieving households, including Mateo Zastro’s, are scattered throughout our city. Mateo, at 3 years old, was among the 120 children younger than 16 who were shot to death in Chicago since 2018, according to Sun-Times data. His case is also among the 85 for which no arrests have been made, leaving his and other traumatized families wondering, understandably, if there will ever be any accountability.
Mateo’s mother, Veronica Zastro, has a tattoo of his face on her arm. She keeps his stuffed animals on the couch, his “PAW Patrol” chair in front of the television, his daycare backpack hanging by the door, and his dinosaur-adorned urn in her bedroom. Not too far from the family’s Southwest Side home, where there’s an honorary street sign for Mateo on the block, is a vibrant mural painted on a grocery store with the child’s likeness and the extinct archosaurian reptiles he so adored.
But in spite of the visible tokens that speak to Mateo’s innocence and fleeting existence, his mother wonders if his memory has disappeared into the ether for others outside her family, including her grandmother and three other children who were in the car when Mateo was gunned down in what Chicago police described as a “road-rage incident” in September 2022.
Zastro told Sun-Times reporter Sophie Sherry that she believes she knows the family of the shooter. That person hasn’t been apprehended and the frustrated mother is tired of hearing that authorities are “trying to build a strong case.”
A Chicago Police Department spokesman wouldn’t comment Tuesday about whether the person Zastro alluded to was interrogated or is considered a suspect, as that could jeopardize the investigation. “We will keep looking,” the spokesman vowed.
Such assurances, while valid, may not provide much relief for Zastro and other parents in the same unenviable position. Neither may the announcement that last year’s homicide clearance rate was 51.70%. — the highest since 2019.
That is no consolation to Chicagoans or others around the country. Way back in 1965, the city’s homicide arrest rate was 91%. The national homicide clearance rate was also at 91%. Those percentages have since plummeted, though that doesn’t necessarily mean police aren’t doing their jobs.
Various factors, including mistrust of police, impede investigations. And in a city where crime is rampant but many witnesses often don’t want to come forward, the caseloads for murders and shootings keep piling up. That means the odds aren’t great for solving many of the 32 shootings and seven murders that happened last weekend across Chicago.
Also increasing at an alarming rate are fatal shootings involving children. Firearm-related incidents have been the leading cause of the death of American children since 2020, surpassing motor vehicle accidents. The year Mateo was killed, 29 other children in Chicago were shot — the highest number in five years.
These fatalities increased nationally by 87% within a decade, from 1,311 in 2011 to 2,590 in 2021, as we pointed out late last year, citing a study published in Pediatrics, a journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Another grim statistic tied to children and guns in the U.S.: Homicide accounted for 60% of gun deaths of children and teens in 2021, according to a Pew Research Center report from a year ago.
By contrast, homicide accounted for 42% of gun deaths of adults that same year.
When more and more children are killed by gun violence, it’s imperative that homicide clearance rates not remain abysmally low. Police must redouble their efforts to solve these crimes. Public officials must support funding for initiatives to protect witnesses who fear retaliation if they speak out.
No parent should have to bury a child. But many mothers and fathers, sadly, do so, and it will continue to be a reality as gun violence proliferates and too many of our elected leaders shrug aside their duty to implement laws to keep weapons out of the hands of those who shouldn’t have them.
The very least that is owed to devastated families who feel as if everyone, including police, have moved on, is justice.
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