Chicago Police are using images from a surveillance camera to help find the person who shot 13-year-old Darius Brown Wednesday while he played basketball.
Those images are the best lead police have right now, but officers believe someone must have seen something that day to help this investigation.
Darius was shot in the neck at 5:20 p.m. Wednesday on the 4200 block of South State Street while playing basketball at Metcalfe Park in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood. Police said he was the unintended target of gunfire that erupted from a passing car.
The boy was taken to Comer Children's Hospital where he was listed in critical condition. He died later Wednesday night.
An original $5,000 reward to find the gunman was increased by friends and family Thursday evening to $9,000.
Police specifically want to talk to the people in the late-model white sedan spotted on surveillance tape around the time of the shooting about a block south of Metcalfe Park.
Thursday afternoon, friends and community members gathered near the scene of the shooting to decry the violence.
"I am so sick and tired of hearing people afraid to come forward and talk because they're afraid of what the shooter may do," said Fr. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina's Catholic Church. "Well it's time to make the shooter afraid of the community. It's time to make the shooter understand you can't do this in this neighborhood."
Family members said they're stunned by what happened and are simply fed up with violence and gun fire in the city.
"You read about it. You hear it on the news. You pray that it stops, but when it affects home you really feel it," said Darius' older sister, Paris Morrison.
Darius would have been an 8th grader at Holy Angels Catholic School.
Police ask that anyone with information about the homicide contact the Area One Detective Division at 312-747-8380.
