Kanari Gentry-Bowers’ family was determined not to let her go.
As the 12-year-old lay unconscious for days in a hospital bed, a bullet wound to her spine, they read to her: notes from friends, a homemade Valentine’s Day card from a boy Kanari liked, a school banner her principal brought over that was dotted with the names of her sixth-grade classmates.
Their resolve only grew stronger after another young girl shot over the weekend, 11-year-old Takiya Holmes, died on Tuesday.
But in the end, all the notes and tears and prayers weren’t enough. Kanari succumbed to her injuries on Wednesday afternoon — the third child to die from a shooting in Chicago in just two days.
While no one was in custody in Kanari’s shooting, authorities announced a break earlier Wednesday in the investigation into Takiya’s slaying.
Like so many other senseless shootings — including Kanari’s — the bullet that crashed into the right side of Takiya’s head found its target seemingly at random. It had been fired from across a busy South Side boulevard by a young man wielding a handgun with an extended magazine. Antwan Jones, 19, was trying to hit three rivals for allegedly infringing on his drug turf, according to Cook County prosecutors.
As the judge was ordering Jones held without bond in a packed courtroom at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, less than three miles away relatives were remembering the short life of Lavontay White Jr., a 2-year-old boy fatally shot Tuesday afternoon when the car he was riding in was ambushed in what police called a gang-related attack.
The boy’s aunt, Sheneka Hill, described Lavontay as "full of life" and friendly, a young boy who enjoyed chicken and juice. Like many toddlers, she said, there "wouldn’t be a day when he wasn’t running around playing with his cars."
Hill said she believes the gunman was targeting her brother, Lazarec Collins, who was also killed.
"My nephew was in the wrong place at the wrong time," she said.
Family of Kanari Bowers asks Chicagoan’s to end gun violence
The family of Kanari Gentry Bowers asks for justice and an end to gun violence after announcing the death of the 12-year-old at Stroger Hospital on Feb. 15, 2017.
The family of Kanari Gentry Bowers asks for justice and an end to gun violence after announcing the death of the 12-year-old at Stroger Hospital on Feb. 15, 2017.
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‘Enough is enough’
In a city already reeling from a more-than-yearlong surge in bloodshed, the sudden loss of three innocent children to gun violence left many stunned, angry and searching for answers.
At a news conference Wednesday morning at police headquarters to announce charges in Takiya’s killing, Superintendent Eddie Johnson raised familiar themes of wanting tougher gun laws to keep repeat offenders off the streets. But it was clear that Johnson spoke with more emotion because of the spate of innocent young victims, saying, "Enough is enough."
The superintendent, noting he had raised three kids of his own, thumped the lectern with his fist at one point in apparent frustration over the criminal justice system’s failure to hold shooters accountable.
"While no arrest or jail sentence will ever bring back the lives or the sounds of laughter of these children, we owe it to them to help save the lives of others and pass this legislation," he said. "How many children do we need to lose before the promises made by certain legislators are kept? How many?"
Jones’ arrest on charges of killing an 11-year-old girl drew the ire of another inmate who punched him two or three times while both were in a holding cell in the courthouse, said Cara Smith, chief policy officer for Sheriff Tom Dart. Smith didn’t know if the other inmate, also being held on a murder charge, would be disciplined over the incident.
Speaking to reporters after Jones’ bond hearing, community activist Andrew Holmes, who is a cousin of Takiya, said bringing her alleged killer to justice doesn’t bring the family any comfort.
"There’s a hole there," said Holmes, who several years ago lost a daughter to random gun violence in Indianapolis. "That voice is not there. That smile is not there. Her dancing is not there. …As safe as you can keep your children close to your side, just that fast their life can be taken."
Late Wednesday, Kanari’s family issued a short statement thanking supporters for their thoughts and prayers over the past few days.
"Please keep your children close and do whatever it takes to protect them from the senseless gun violence in our city," the family said.
Recent shootings illustrate how quickly innocent children can become victims in some of the city’s most gang-infested neighborhoods.
Crucial surveillance video
In court Wednesday, Jones, dressed in a maroon jacket with a faux fur-lined hood, kept his head bowed and his hands clasped behind his back as he listened to prosecutors detail the first-degree murder charges against him.
Assistant State’s Attorney Jamie Santini said Jones and several fellow Black Disciples street gang members had walked through the Parkway Gardens complex to confront three people who they believed were selling cannabis in their territory near 65th Street and South Martin Luther King Drive.
When his group neared King Drive, Jones pulled out a semi-automatic handgun with an extended magazine and fired it multiple times across the busy, four-lane roadway, where the three targets were standing, Santini said. Police recovered 12 shell casings at the scene.
At the time, Takiya’s family had just pulled up in the minivan and was parked across from the TailoRite Cleaners just south of 65th Street. One of the bullets entered the rear passenger window of the minivan and struck Takiya in the right temple as she sat next to her 3-year-old brother, Santini said.
"The van couldn’t have been there more than a minute and this stray bullet strikes her, causing her death," Chicago police Cmdr. Brendan Deenihan said at the Wednesday morning news conference.
Police recovered 12 shell casings from the spot where Jones fired and also obtained video surveillance from several buildings that showed Jones as he opened fire, the prosecutor said.
Takiya was rushed to Comer Children’s Hospital a mile and a half to the north, but by Tuesday morning, she died in her mother’s arms after she was taken off life support.
Deenihan said the surveillance video was crucial to the swift arrest in the case. Gang investigators helped detectives identify witnesses who cooperated with authorities and identified Jones as the gunman, said Deenihan. Jones surrendered to police but did not make a statement, instead requesting an attorney, Deenihan said..
Deenihan also noted that Jones had not even come close to hitting any of his intended targets, who weren’t even in the parking lot where Takiya sat in the minivan.
"I don’t know if people think this is TV. …These are handguns, and the bullets start flying, they go everywhere," the commander said. "This is not a very accurate weapon."
Police sources said Jones is a reputed member of the O-Block faction of the Black Disciples. Prosecutors said Jones has a criminal background, mostly as a juvenile, and several misdemeanor arrests as an adult. Jones was scheduled to appear in court again next month on a domestic battery charge, records show.
Johnson told reporters that police had long been aware of Jones and noted that he had made the department’s strategic subject list — a list of about 1,400 people, primarily gang members, considered most likely to shoot someone or become a victim of violence. It is compiled through a computerized algorithm and includes a myriad factors, including individuals’ criminal history, especially any weapons offenses or crimes of violence; their age at their first arrest; whether the nature of their arrests escalated over the years; if they had been the intended targets of shootings or the victims of violence; and if those they’ve been arrested with had themselves been shot.
Jones scored 354 out of 500, said chief police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.
After Jones’ bond hearing, Holmes, the community activist, said Jones was an example of why the community needs to reach out to young men before they choose to pick up a gun.
"He could have been saved," Holmes said. "If the right people had reached out to him and stopped him before he made that bad choice, he could have been saved."
Takiya Holmes murder suspect denied bond
At the Leighton Criminal Court Building in Chicago on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017, activist Andrew Holmes says community pressure led to the arrest of Antwan C. Jones, who is charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of 11-year-old Takiya Holmes. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
At the Leighton Criminal Court Building in Chicago on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017, activist Andrew Holmes says community pressure led to the arrest of Antwan C. Jones, who is charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of 11-year-old Takiya Holmes. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
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Families bonded by violence
Kanari was shot about half an hour before Takiya while playing basketball with friends at Henderson Elementary School, the school she attended in the West Englewood neighborhood, police said. The bullet struck her uppermost vertebrae, close to the base of her head, and caused brain damage. She’d been on life support ever since.
When she died Wednesday, Kanari was surrounded by her mother, her father and her uncle, according to Dawn Valenti, a family friend and crisis counselor who was just outside the door.
"Her brain function was gone. There was nothing else they could do for her, nothing at all," Valenti said. "It was out of their hands. She was gone."
A day earlier, when Valenti heard the news that Takiya had died, she knew she had to be the one to break the sad news to Kanari’s paternal grandmother, Patricia Donald-Bowers, the child’s legal guardian.
"The shock value of it – I didn’t want her to see it on TV, I wanted to tell her personally so she could kind of absorb it," Valenti said.
She said the two families have reached out to one another, with some of Kanari’s relatives attending a vigil for Takiya on Tuesday and offering condolences to Takiya’s mother.
"It’s amazing how two families can be bonded by an act of violence … coming together because their children suffered," Valenti said.
After Henderson principal Marvis Jackson-Ivy dropped off a pile of letters and cards at the hospital on Tuesday, Donald-Bowers read them on a Facebook Live stream.
"Y’all done put so much thought and love into the cards, when Kanari see it she gonna love it," Donald said into the camera.
She got in some good teasing, too. She complimented one student’s handwriting, seemed impressed one student wrote to Kanari in Spanish, and saved her best taunts for a student who had a bit of trouble with spelling (it’s "choir," not "quire," she said).
Valenti said the string of innocent children killed in gunfire is a signal of a city in crisis.
"We’ve got too much happening and too many innocent children and these feral children out on the streets with too many guns," she said. "Because if they do understand what’s behind pulling that trigger, then they have to be soulless."
Facebook Live captures shooting of 2-year-old, 2 adults in Chicago
A video streamed over Facebook Live shows shooting of 2-year-old and two adults in Chicago.
A video streamed over Facebook Live shows shooting of 2-year-old and two adults in Chicago.
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On Facebook Live
The shooting of Lavontay on a sunny, unusually warm Valentine’s Day was especially shocking because it was all captured on Facebook Live.
Police said Collins, 26, and his pregnant girlfriend were riding in a car with his nephew in the back seat when a gunman emerged from another car and opened fire in an alley in the 4400 block of West Ogden Avenue, behind an AC Delco auto parts shop.
The boy was shot in the head and pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital at 2:43 p.m. Tuesday, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. Collins was also shot in the head and died at the scene. The woman, 20, and her unborn baby were both listed in fair condition at Mount Sinai Hospital as of Tuesday. No arrests have been made.
Hill, the boy’s aunt, told the Tribune on Wednesday that several of the boy’s relatives live in a home near the alley where the boy was shot. Lavontay’s mother was at work at a nursing home when the shooting happened, she said. His father is currently in prison, and his mother has been raising him alone at her home.
Records show Collins had been paroled from prison last summer after serving half of an 8-year sentence for burglary. Hill said her brother was babysitting the boy at the time, "trying to make up for the lost time he didn’t get to spend with (family)."
Hill described her sister, the fourth of nine siblings, as a protective parent who doted on her boy.
"She acted like that was it, there was no us, it was just her and him," Hill said. "She was careful with who keep her son, where he go, who he with, what he touch, what he eat, especially with him being her only child.
Hill called it a "terrible loss" for the family and mother.
"She’s hanging in there, but no mother wants to bury their child, especially not that young," she said.
Chicago Tribune’s Jeremy Gorner, Annie Sweeney, Elvia Malgone and William Lee contributed.
kdouglas@chicagotribune.com
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
gpratt@chicagotribune.com
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