Antonio Smith, 9, was fatally shot in Chicago’s Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood and his heartbroken family is searching for answers, reports ABC7Chicago.com.
“My baby, he was a good kid. He was a mama’s boy. He stayed up under me. He called me every day. I’m at work, ‘Mama, I love you. Mama, can I have this. Mama, can I have that,’” mother Brandi Murry said. “My boy, he was just an angel.”
Smith was going to be entering the 4th grade in two weeks. Instead, religious leaders, lead by Father Michael Pfleger, have raised $13,000 to help bring his killer to justice.
“We should be as outraged about that as Michael Brown in Ferguson,” Pfleger said. “At the end of the day, another black child is dead. And whatever the excuse somebody may have done that for, unacceptable.”
Murry said she called police to report her son missing when he wasn’t at home when she got off work.
“We called the police. I said, I want to report him missing. Maybe five minutes later, the police came to the house. They asked me to show a picture of him. Once I did that, they told me to come to the hospital,” Murry said.
Smith had been found near Kimbark and 71st Street on Wednesday afternoon, a few blocks from his home, reports ABC7Chicago. He was pronounced dead about an hour later at a local children’s hospital.
He was shot in the chest, arm at hands, according to his mother, including once in the heart.
Community activist Andrew Holmes called the child’s death an “execution.”
“We just got him a football. We just put him in football,” Kawada Hodges, father, said, pointing to a picture of his son. “Nine years old. You took that. You all see that? You all hurt me.”
Antonio Smith: Reward Offered In Murder Of 9-Year-Old Chicago Boy was originally published on newsone.com
