By ASHLEE REZIN
Chicago Sun-Times Wire
Chicago Police investigate in the 9000 block of South Marshfield, where two men were shot to death on a porch early Sunday, June 12, 2016. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
Mourners gather in the 9000 block of South Marshfield after two men were shot to death on a porch early Sunday. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
Antwon Brooks and another man were shot to death early Sunday on a porch in the Brainerd neighborhood, just hours after they attended the funeral for another victim of Chicago gun violence.
Officers responded at 1:13 a.m. to a call of shots fired in the 9000 block of South Marshfield and found the men, ages 34 and 42, unresponsive, according to Chicago Police.
The older man, identified as Brooks, was pronounced dead at the scene at 1:45 a.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. His home address wasn’t known. An autopsy showed he died of multiple gunshot wounds and his death was ruled a homicide.
The other man’s name had not been released by the medical examiner’s office as of Monday morning, pending notification of his family.
Chicago Police investigate in the 9000 block of South Marshfield, where two men were shot to death on a porch early Sunday. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
Neighbors whose homes were surrounded by crime scene tape stood on porches and in their front yards as detectives investigated. The men, one covered by a white sheet and the other by a blue sheet, could be seen lying on the bungalow’s porch among at least 15 evidence markers.
Dontell Petty, 37, one of more than a dozen people gathered in the street outside the tape, said Brooks was his cousin and a graduate of Calumet High School. He had a son and daughter in their 20s, and four grandchildren.
“He was a good, caring daddy,” Petty said, adding the other man was known as “Shoeshine.”
Petty said he grew up in Brainerd with Brooks—whom he called “Ice” because he was “slick as ice”—but has lived in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, for about 10 years. He and his girlfriend drove from Wisconsin to Chicago for a Saturday afternoon funeral, and while en route, picked up Brooks in Racine, where Petty said the victim has lived off-and-on for about a year.
Petty, Brooks and “Shoeshine” all attended the funeral for 43-year-old Anreco D. Nichols, who was gunned down June 5 in his home in the 8100 block of South Harvard.
Petty said they were “longtime neighborhood friends,” and that he and Brooks also attended the recent funeral for Pamela Johnson, who was fatally struck by a truck on Lake Shore Drive when she and her boyfriend tried to run away from an armed robbery on May 29.
After Saturday’s funeral, Petty said he, Brooks and “Shoeshine” were with a group at Gil’s Tieke Lounge, when Petty and his girlfriend left to buy cigarettes and beer.
“It was 20 or 30 minutes later, I was into my second beer, that’s when I got the bad news,” Petty said, adding that a friend called to tell him about the shooting.
He said he didn’t know the owners of the bungalow or why his cousin was on the porch.
“How they found him right there, that’s f****d up,” Petty said.
At the crime scene, a woman wailed and screamed as investigators removed the white sheet from one of the victims.
“That’s my baby! That’s my baby,” she cried as she collapsed in the street, flanked by silent supporters who hugged her and rubbed her back.
Petty darted back and forth around the tape, trying to get a look at the crime scene.
“He was a decent guy, a good daddy, but he was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said of Brooks.
“We just left a funeral, and now I gotta go to another one.”