Endia Martin / Photo from Facebook
BY MITCH DUDEK AND TINA SFONDELES
Chicago Sun-Times
A 14-year-old girl was charged with first-degree murder Tuesday after allegedly shooting another teenage girl in an argument over a boy, police said.
The suspect was charged as a juvenile in the death Monday afternoon of 14-year-old Endia Martin, police said.
In addition, an uncle of the 14-year-old shooter and another individual have been arrested in connection with the gun that the girl allegedly used in the shooting, police said. One of those individuals may have brought the gun to the scene, knowing there was going to be a fight, police said, but no one has been charged yet.
Crime scene where Endia Martin was killed / Photo by Richard A. Chapman
Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy, clearly frustrated, said Tuesday at a news conference that tougher gun laws could have prevented the slaying.
“What would have been, under any other circumstances, probably a fistfight between two 14-year-old girls because of an argument over a boy turned into a murder,” he said.
The gun used in the shooting, a legal .38-caliber revolver, was kept in the owner’s car but was reported stolen April 14, McCarthy said. Police departments don’t let officers store their guns in their cars but under the state’s concealed-carry law, individuals who are properly permitted can.
“That’s insanity. This is madness, folks. This is madness,” he said.
A 16-year-old girl also was shot in the arm and was taken to St. Bernard’s Hospital and Healthcare Center, authorities said.
“I’m very frustrated. I’m sickened. Three ... lives were changed forever yesterday with an introduction of a gun into a fistfight,” McCarthy said.
Endia was shot in the back about 4:30 p.m. Monday in the 900 block of West Garfield Boulevard, police said. A group of teenagers was standing on the sidewalk when an altercation broke out, and someone in the group pulled out a gun and started shooting, police said.
Endia, of the 5300 block of South Wallace Street, was taken to University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital, where she died at 5:10 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. Endia’s stepfather, Kent Kennedy, said the girl wanted to visit Paris and Rome and join the Navy or go to college.
Kennedy struggled to make sense of the violence.
“I’d still like to know what was the purpose of getting a gun and shooting,” he said Monday night.
“My daughter didn’t roam the streets at night,” said Kennedy, who works a number of jobs at Central Steel and Wire. “We were too strict. We had a strict curfew. She didn’t gang-bang. She never was in trouble with police.”
Kennedy said Endia had recently transferred to Tilden High School from Chicago Vocational High School because he and his wife worried that her commute — two buses and a train — might not be safe.
Kennedy, a former Marine who raised Endia from the time she was 6, said she had big dreams.
“She wanted to do some traveling. I told her the Navy was a perfect fit. She always was talking about how she wanted to go to Paris and places like Italy,” Kennedy said. “And she loved to get dressed up and change her hair all different ways. And she had these footwork dance contests on the block or at her school.”
Kennedy and his wife, who works as a certified nursing assistant at a nursing home, were distraught Monday night.
“Me and my wife, we work constantly, every day raising three kids . . . And I hate to say it, but the good kids, the standout children who are trying to go to school and do something with their lives, they’re the ones who are actually dying in the streets. The ones who want to accomplish something in life,” he said. “It’s not a South Side thing or a West Side thing, it’s the city as a whole. It seems like you can’t walk down the street or even ride the bus any more.”
“Never would I imagine a 14-year-old child would get gunned down in broad daylight,” Kennedy said.
“She will never graduate from high school or get to go to prom, none of that. She was mapping out a plan with her life,” said Kennedy, who wondered if he was sometimes too hard on his daughter.
“She had a kind heart, but she was kind of naive. People used to say I was too strict, too hard, because I would limit where she was going, or that we worried too much. She was too innocent. Too young to go. It’s a feeling that you can’t describe.”
-- Contributing: Stefano Esposito and LeeAnn Shelton