By Elvia Malagon, Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO
Virvey Wilson woke up Sunday morning and thought it was strangely quiet in her West Side home.
She typically woke up to her 16-year-old grandson, who she's raised since his mother died, making noise in the kitchen as he put together a bowl of cereal. She got up and checked his bedroom.
"He's gone," Wilson said. "He's really gone."
Her grandson Jaheim Wilson was shot to death Saturday less than half a mile from their Austin neighborhood home. She tried to see her grandson Saturday at the crime scene and later at West Suburban Medical Center, but officials turned her away at both locations, she said. She'll be able to see the teen's body Monday when she goes to the Cook County morgue to formally identify him.
"I felt so hurt," Wilson said. "They said I couldn't see him. I didn't care how he looked, I wanted to see my child."
The shooting happened about 5:05 p.m. Saturday as Jaheim Wilson walked with a 13-year-old boy in an alley in the 5100 block of West Huron Street, Chicago police said. Someone opened fire at them, hitting Jaheim Wilson in the hand, leg and head. The 13-year-old boy was shot in the leg and was taken to Loyola University Medical Center, where his condition was stabilized, police said. No arrests had been made in the case as of Sunday, according to Chicago police.
Wilson had last seen Jaheim Wilson about an hour before the shooting. She was told by police that her grandson and the boy, possibly with other friends, were walking from a friend's house to a nearby convenience store when the shooting happened.
He was the youngest of six siblings that Wilson and her husband have been raising ever since her daughter, Latina Wilson, died about eight years ago, she said.
Wilson said her grandson made her laugh and would help when she cooked, though his favorite thing to eat was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She would find jelly stains on her kitchen counter and know he had eaten another sandwich.
"He would keep you laughing," she said. "That's one thing I'll miss."
His favorite basketball player was LeBron James, and she would tease him by cheering for the Bulls when they played against James' Cleveland Cavaliers.
Jaheim Wilson was a sophomore at Marshall Metropolitan High School, Wilson said. Officials from the school could not be immediately reached for comment Sunday. Her grandson liked playing sports, but he didn't know what he wanted to do after high school.
"I told him just finish school and be somebody," she said.
But Wilson lamented that her grandson didn't even get a chance to do that.
"Turn yourself in," Wilson said, addressing whoever shot her grandson. "You never know, they might be the next victim. Turn yourself in - you took a young man's life for nothing."
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