Jasmine Curry / Submitted photo
BY STEFANO ESPOSITO
Chicago Sun-Times
As traffic crawled past the blue minivan with its windows shot out Wednesday morning, Pierre Curry found himself in a horribly familiar situation — getting ready to pick out a casket for one of his children.
About 4 a.m., in the southbound lanes of the Dan Ryan Expressway near 59th Street, an unknown gunman shot one of his daughters, Jasmine Curry, 24 — a pregnant mother of five.
Police were talking to a young woman who was believed to be inside the Dodge Caravan minivan at the time of the shooting, Pierre Curry said investigators have told him. Police were looking to talk to another young man believed to have been in the minivan, Curry said.
Illinois State Police had said they were working with the Chicago Police Department to try to find any other vehicles involved, and by Wednesday afternoon, they announced they were looking for a silver Dodge Intrepid in connection with the shooting.
Pierre Curry said he isn’t sure why his daughter was driving so late at night, except perhaps to visit some friends in the area. He said his daughter — five months’ pregnant — was due to start a new job at the Ford City Mall Wednesday.
A weary-looking Curry lost a 17-year-old son to gun violence last August — shot in the head, he said, just like his daughter.
“I just don’t understand young people in Chicago today,” said the 45-year-old, who has three other children. “They don’t give a damn. They ain’t got no heart.”
Jasmine’s children, ranging in age from one to nine, are staying with a grandmother, Pierre Curry said.
Illinois State Police called the shooting “an isolated incident.”
Police said the shots were fired as the Dodge was southbound on the Dan Ryan somewhere between 55th and 59th street. Three people were inside the minivan at the time, with two of them escaping uninjured, police said.
The minivan belonged to Curry, and she often used it to take her children to school and daycare, her cousin, Ieshia Curry, said.
“She was a sweet person, she was kind, outgoing,” said Ieshia Curry, 19. “She would do anything for anybody.”
Police were still interviewing witnesses and checking footage from surveillance cameras in the area early Wednesday, State Police Capt. Luis Gutierrez said.
Southbound local lanes of the highway were closed in the vicinity of the shooting for several hours Wednesday morning but had reopened by early Wednesday afternoon.
Jasmine Curry’s death comes slightly less than a year after her brother Pierce L. Curry was fatally shot while riding in a vehicle on the South Side in the early morning hours of Aug. 27, 2013.
Pierce Curry, 17, was in the back seat of a car when gunfire errupted from another car in the 6200 block of South State Street, police said. A single bullet struck Curry in the head, police said.
As Pierre Curry waited beneath the rusting L tracks along the Dan Ryan for information about his daughter’s killing, he saw no end to the plague of violence on the South Side.
“I ain’t scared of these fools out here. They took two of my children,” he said. “It ain’t going to stop with mine. It’s going to keep going on and on.”