Lake Effect News

By LORRAINE SWANSON
Editor

Hastily organized prayer vigils for victims of unsolved homicides were held in neighborhoods across the city on Saturday. Under the watchful eyes of Chicago police, community members gathered on street corners and sidewalks forever stamped in neighborhood memory as macabre landmarks where young victims, all of them under age 19, met violent ends.

Bishop James Wilkowski of the Church of the Holy Family at 5749 N. Kenmore passes out CAPS brochures to a man at the corner of Lawrence and Sheridan. The event was one of 11 "Chain of Change" vigils held across the city on Saturday for young victims of open homicide cases.

The “Chain of Change” prayer vigil was organized in part to begin eliminating the neighborhood code of silence and fear that often discourages witnesses from contacting police with information that can help solve open homicide cases. Eleven prayer vigils took place simultaneously at noon in neighborhoods throughout the city that had witnessed senseless murders of young people.

With the exception of a reporter and a Channel 2 TV news cameraman, nobody came to vigil for murder victim Timothy Pittman, a young Uptown man who was 19 when he was gunned down on a Sheridan Road sidewalk in August 2008.

Bundled against the unseasonably cold weather, Bishop James Wilkowski of the Church of the Holy Family, and church member Jamie Alaniz pressed CAPS brochures into the hands of passers-by at the corner of Lawrence and Sheridan, that provided phone numbers for police tip lines where residents could call and report crimes in their neighborhoods under the cloak of anonymity.

“We’ll pray if people come,” Wilkowski said, standing just steps away from where Pittman was slain.

It was a gorgeous late summer afternoon the Friday before Labor Day on Aug. 29, 2008. The summer in Uptown had been long and violent, marred by a dozen shootings that began with the slaying of Truman College student Francis Oduro in May, killed after he was caught in gang crossfire across the street from Ald. Helen Shiller’s 46th Ward service office at 4544 N. Broadway.

Residents had the long holiday weekend on their minds as some left work early to run errands or pick up last minute school supplies when Chicago Public Schools reopened the next week. A staff member at Uptown Ministries, a person that Pittman trusted and would frequently drop in on to have long conversations, recalled Pittman as being “extremely nervous” when he stopped by hours before he was killed that afternoon.

“I told him to go home,” she said.

But Pittman had no home to go. He had been banned by management from entering 920 W. Lakeside Place, a federally subsidized rental building in Uptown where he had grown up after being arrested for gang related crimes. A resident who was outside gardening a block away on Kenmore Avenue remembered hearing several gunshots at 3:22 p.m. when the first 911 call was placed and a woman wailing.

Word of a teenager being shot and killed on the 4800 block of North Sheridan Road quickly spread through the Uptown neighborhood. A 24-year-old man who had been with Pittman sustained chest and shoulder wounds. A Police News Affairs spokeswoman said at the time that both men were walking on the west side of Sheridan Road when they were approached by a shooter who opened fire on them and fled in an unknown direction. Earlier that day both victims had had a verbal run-in with the shooter.

Within moments a hundred residents and a convoy of TV news trucks crowded the J.J. Pepper’s parking lot at Lawrence and Sheridan, cordoned off from Pittman’s tarp-covered body by yellow police tape. Four men were brought in for questioning by police, and another young man was handcuffed and carted off when his anger over the shooting grew out of control.

Street shrine for Timothy Pittman, who was 19 when he was gunned down on the 4800 block of North Sheridan on Aug. 29, 2008.

That evening, grieving teenagers lit candles and spray-painted the sidewalk and the facade of the convenience store where Pittman’s body had fallen hours earlier with graffiti that read, “R.I.P. Tim, Lakesde’s Finest.”

Pittman’s death garnered little sympathy from the larger Uptown community. While most comments left on the neighborhood blog Uptown Update were measured and empathetic–he was the only son and brother in a family who loved him–others reflected the anger felt by Uptown residents fed up with the summer’s gang violence and shootings:

“It’s his kind that ruined neighborhoods for years now and make people prisoners [of] their own homes. I say good riddance! He received what he deserved.”

“I feel more sympathy for the 44 men and women who had their tires slashed for no good reason…I’m just glad there’s one less banger on the streets.”

“love u Tim man see u when i get there.”

Despite the outpouring of anger and grief from Pittman’s circle of friends, his murder remains enveloped in the youth code of silence. Gathered on the sidewalk still covered in foam and gore the evening after Pittman’s death where teenagers went about with their makeshift shrine, one girl angrily confronted a reporter: “Why don’t you go up the street and ask them why this happened?”

Wilkowski and Alaniz finally left the corner at 12:30 p.m., when it was apparent that no one was coming, with Wilkowski expressing his frustration, “I’m tired of things that are arranged at the last minute.”

Talking to a 20th District police officer parked in the J.J. Pepper parking lot on Saturday, a suspect was brought in for grilling by Area 3 detectives days after Pittman’s murder. None of the young people, who were said to have witnessed the shooting or have knowledge of it, would come forward with information identifying the man and he was released.

“They said they would take care of it internally,” the cop said.

Police expected retaliation from the Uptown’s warring gangs but there was no avenging Pittman’s murder. Like gang members who sit in Cook County’s criminal courts deserted by their buddies with only their families there to support them, Pittman appears to be similarly abandoned in death.

To be fair, there was little advance notice of Saturday’s prayer vigil. Lake Effect News did not receive the press release from Police News Affairs until 5:30 Friday afternoon. There were no fliers about the vigil distributed in the neighborhood. Even the brochures being passed out by Wilkowski and Alaniz bore no mention that police were seeking the public’s help for information solving Pittman’s or any of the other victims’ unsolved murders.

Pastor Darrell Grey of the Anointed Whole Gospel Ministries, who organized the “Chain of Change” prayer vigil was surprised when reached by phone later on Saturday that no one from Uptown showed up for Pittman’s vigil.

“I’m absolutely shocked because Bishop Wilkowski was one of the first that I gave the information and flyers too,” Grey said.

Grey described the other vigils that took place on the South and West Sides as being “awesome,” though he admitted the Chain of Change was arranged quickly after he received a vision from God just a few days before.

“This is first time I’ve conducted something of this magnitude,” Grey said. “In terms of forward notice this was actually put together rather quickly by myself … I have to applaud people from the mayor’s office for their cooperation and Vance Henry, the deputy director of the Mayor’s Office of Faith Based Initiatives.”

Assigning clergy to minister at each of the vigil locations, Grey said he tried to make as many of them as he could on Saturday. Between 50 and 60 young men came to locations at 4400 W. Adams for the vigil for Ramone Morris and around the corner on the 3700 block of West Polk for murder victims Percy Day and Tyrone Williams, “where they joined hands in prayer.”

“I believe there is a fear of retaliation and of youth being considered snitches,” Grey said. “Police have an anonymous tip line that you can call and leave information, which makes the youth code of silence that much more ridiculous. If you don’t want to talk to authorities speak to a minister or talk to a church so that those who commit these crimes can be brought to bear justice.”

On 110th Street, family members did not know of the vigil being held for Gregory Robinson and arrived at 1 p.m. when it was almost over. “We prayed with the family,” Grey said.

Grey hopes to continue the Chain of Change vigils on a regular basis to bridge the communication gap between neighborhood residents and police.

“Somewhere along the line there has been a breakdown in communication between the community and authorities,” Grey said. “This is the beginning of us as a community reuniting with one another and becoming the community that we once were. We have to put aside those boundaries that we have set based on economics, race, education and class. We can’t insist on having those boundaries when those who tear down our nation don’t hold those boundaries themselves if we don’t come together.”

Ministering to young men on the South Side, many of whom are unchurched and belong to gangs or are at risk of joining one, Grey holds weekly services at W.W. Jackson Funeral Home at 2701 W. 63d Street at 2:30 p.m. Sunday afternoons.

“One thing I emphasize to them is at least you’re coming in of your own free will and leaving of your own free will,” Grey said. “No one is carrying you in because of some senseless crime. I like to coin the phrase that ‘God has given me the opportunity to seek life in a dead situation.’”

For the young men who don’t want to come for fellowship, Grey seeks them out on the streets. Much like the Chain of Change vigils, with some watering, he believes that some of them will blossom and think about making different decisions for their lives.

Perhaps after a few more vigils in Uptown, someone will finally come forward with some information that will help solve the murder of Timothy Pittman and bring some peace and closure to his grieving family.