Community activists, along with friends and family of shooting victim Vonzell Banks, have started patrolling Hadiya Pendleton Park, where the teen was killed over the weekend.
Banks, 17, was shot to death while playing basketball with his brother and friends in the South Side park on the afternoon of July 3, his family said. He was on the verge of beginning his senior year of high school and was set to start a summer job on Monday.
Police say Banks was likely not the intended victim.
Another 19-year-old man was also shot in the foot and transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where his condition stabilized. Banks was shot in the back.
The park where the shooting occurred was named after 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, an honors student at King College Prep who was killed in a shooting in 2013 shortly after performing with the school band at President Obama's inauguration ceremony. Police said Pendleton was not the intended victim of the shooting.
In response to the shooting, community activists in Bronzeville have stationed themselves in the park to show of solidarity and to help protect the community from further violence.
"We know — No. 1 — that the police can't do this by themselves," Bamani Ovadele, a Bronzeville activist, said. "It's going to take women and men in these communities to stand up."
Local
The group of activists plans to patrol the park from open to close all week, they said.
Banks was one of nine people who were killed over a violent Fourth of July weekend. A 7-year-old was also shot to death in the Humboldt Park neighborhood while watching Fourth of July fireworks with his father, who Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said was the intended target.
