‘This kid had an impact on people’
The troubled life and fleeting potential of Laquan McDonald
The summer before he was killed, Laquan McDonald walked through Chicago’s Loop to get a copy of his birth certificate with a mentor who was helping him find a job.
It marked, the mentor recalled, the teen’s first time exploring on foot the bustling downtown, less than 10 miles from the impoverished West Side neighborhood where McDonald grew up but seemingly a world away from its violence.
Passers-by approached apprehensively at the sight of McDonald — 6-foot-2 with short dreadlocks, baggy clothes and a chipped front tooth — so the mentor coached him how to dispel negative stereotypes with eye contact and a smile.
The two had become tight after the adult opened up to the troubled youth about how he, too, had to learn to navigate the city’s long-standing racial fault lines while growing up as a young black man without a father, surrounded by gangs and drugs in a poor neighborhood.
The mentor saw promise in McDonald and encouraged him to believe in himself.
Just weeks after his 17th birthday, McDonald’s 2014 death on a Southwest Side street at the hands of a Chicago police officer drew little attention. More than a year later, though, that changed in dramatic fashion with the courtordered release of a video showing the white officer shooting the black teen 16 times. The vivid images of Officer Jason Van Dyke unloading his gun on McDonald as the
teen appeared to walk away with a knife in his hand has rocked Chicago in the three years since unlike any other police-involved shooting in its history.
Now, with opening statements in Van Dyke’s highly anticipated murder trial expected as soon as Monday, a look back at McDonald’s life shows that the odds were stacked against him since birth.
Still, despite his myriad problems, the teen possessed a sense of humor, resilience and love of family that impressed teachers, counselors, probation officers as well as a juvenile court judge.
The Chicago Tribune has reviewed hundreds of pages of state child welfare and county juvenile court records and interviewed relatives, friends and the professionals who tried to show him a better way to reveal a fuller portrait of the lanky teen with the distinctive fast-paced walk.
He was born possibly substance exposed with multiple medical problems to a 15-year-old mother who was in state care due to her own mom’s drug addiction, records show. McDonald’s father was absent nearly all his life because of drugs and prison.
As a toddler, McDonald shuttled between multiple homes. He found stability with his great-grandmother but grew into an angry teen who admitted to smoking marijuana each day by the time he was 11 to help keep a “smile on my face” amid the chaos that plagued his childhood.
McDonald had learning disabilities and complex mental health diagnoses. He was hospitalized three times for psychiatric issues and had repeated school suspensions, expulsions and truancies much of his life.
Arrested 26 times since the age of 13, he was in and out of juvenile detention in the last three years of his life.
‘You only live once’
McDonald was a chubby little kid whose family called him “Bon Bon.” The nickname stuck, even in later years when the teen grew fit and tall.
He liked to rap and dance and could make you “laugh until you cried,” a youth volunteer for a social service agency recalled. “Always bubbly, always smiling, always asking questions.”
When asked what he wanted to do with his life, McDonald on occasion talked about nursing, inspired by his great-grandmother’s long illness. In the final months of his life, he learned how to install drywall, paint and other apprentice tasks on a parttime job rehabbing properties. He liked the idea of starting his own business someday and working with his hands.
He had tattoos on each of his hands: One read “Good Son,” the other a pair of dice with the acronym “YOLO” — “You only live once.”
His greatest love was family, especially his younger sister, now 18, of whom he was fiercely protective, relatives said. And he was quick to give a hug.
“He was more like a brother,” said Tyniece Hunter, a younger cousin. “A big piece of the family is gone because he was the life of the party. He kept everyone together and smiling.”
Two friends, Aaron Wilson and Christian Poole, said in interviews for the WBEZ-FM 91.5/Chicago Tribune podcast “16 Shots” that they were “kicking it” with McDonald the night before he was killed.
In their group, McDonald was known as “Corn Dog.”
“He always walking down the street, singing songs and stuff,” said Wilson, 24. “He just always had this fast little walk … like he in charge. … He always trying to get to his destination. He always going to be remembered, though.”
Added Poole, 28, who has a tattoo in McDonald’s memory: “He wasn’t no bad person. He didn’t deserve what he got that night.”
Due to his subpoena as a potential defense witness, McDonald’s mentor declined public comment. But court records show the mentor thought McDonald was maturing, his poor selfimage improving. He was about to start treatment for the first time for his dependence on drugs, mainly marijuana, according to one report.
In and out of state custody
It had been a long haul for McDonald to get to that point.
His great-grandmother, Goldie Hunter, primarily cared for him since he was 5. A widow and retired laborer with a seventhgrade education, she raised about a dozen children, some her own and others from later generations. They affectionately called her “Big Mama.”
They lived in subsidized housing in the city’s rough Austin neighborhood. McDonald’s mother, Tina Hunter, lived nearby.
The state first took custody of her two children weeks before Christmas 2000 when McDonald was 3 because of an accidental radiator burn suffered by his 8-month-old sister, state records show.
The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services ruled it was neglect because the children were unsupervised, according to the records.
Hunter regained custody in May 2002, but the state intervened again 13 months later after the mother’s intoxicated boyfriend was accused by staff at McDonald’s day care of beating him with a belt on the chest, legs and face because he had misbehaved during a field trip, records showed.
The 5-year-old McDonald went back to live with his great-grandmother. By then, the state had twice placed him in foster homes outside the family. He also had a couple of shelter stays. His time away from family was brief, a month or two at most.
But it was during the second foster placement that McDonald complained he had been whipped with an extension cord, barely fed and repeatedly touched in a sexual manner by an older male. His complaint was deemed unfounded for lack of evidence. Still, records showed, he was never given therapy for sexual abuse despite “being a very angry child with definite aggressive tendencies, and (who) had knowledge of sex beyond his developmental age.”
Back in his great-grandmother’s home, it was clear as McDonald aged that his problems went beyond the elderly woman’s grasp. He repeated first grade. A few years later, a 10-year-old McDonald was expelled after he was accused of throwing a chair at his fourth grade teacher and threatening to kill her, records said.
McDonald received special education services, but his disruptive behavior in school for fighting with other students and disrespecting teachers, along with truancies and suspensions, became a common theme, stunting his progress in the half-dozen or more schools that followed.
In a 2012 interview with child welfare officials, Goldie Hunter said she tried her best with her great-grandson, saying she “talks, talks and talks to him” while encouraging him to be his own man.
She remained his guardian until her death at 78 in August 2013. She had languished in a hospital for two months in a coma before her death. McDonald was stuck in the county’s juvenile detention center for part of that time, but he was able to visit her, later describing how he squeezed her hand and felt that she knew he was there. He also was allowed to attend her funeral.
His mother petitioned the court soon after to try to regain custody of her children.
In the final year of her son’s life, she was regularly attending family therapy, made “substantial progress” in providing her children a stable home environment and wanted “to do what (she) needs to do for her kids,” according to court records and state reports.
“They laughed and they joked with each other. They were mother and son, and if you didn’t know any better, sometimes you’d think they were friends,” said the Rev. Marvin Hunter, McDonald’s great-uncle. “He had a love for his family, and his family loved him.”
In the meantime, one of McDonald’s uncles had temporary guardianship over him and his sister. They lived on the city’s South Side in another violent neighborhood.
‘Everything be funny’
The child welfare records quote McDonald at various ages in his own words.
When he was hospitalized for psychiatric problems at 11, he showed his emotional wounds on a test asking him to complete partial sentences.
“Bad,” he said when asked to describe his view of the world. Another question asked: What does every child get? “Punched,” he responded.
At 16, in another interview, he tried to brush off his father’s abandonment.
“It is what it is,” he said in summer 2013 while locked in juvenile detention. “My momma was there all the time. Don’t need no daddy.”
According to the records, McDonald spoke with frankness to counselors and clinicians about how as young as 11 he began smoking dope and hanging out with gangs while in the fifth grade.
“It was the ’hood I was in,” the records quoted him as saying.
McDonald admitted getting into fights with “sticks and bottles” but never a gun or knife. He said he’d escaped gunfire in the past, crediting God for being at his side.
He had three psychiatric hospitalizations by 13, the records showed. He was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and oppositional defiance disorder with authority.
McDonald complained his medication made him feel sick, so he self-medicated with marijuana. He admitted smoking up to “30 blunts” a day, sometimes sharing with friends, and at times selling drugs to support his habit, records said.
“I like how high I be,” he said, according to one report. “Everything be funny.”
McDonald had frequent run-ins with police. He admitted he was high during most of his arrests.
He was 13 during his first arrest for alleged cocaine possession. In all, McDonald was arrested 26 times in a little more than three-year period — from April 2011 to July 2014, according to records. He was never charged as an adult, but prosecutors did pursue seven cases in juvenile court for delinquency, all related to small amounts of marijuana, heroin or cocaine.
Six of the seven cases were dismissed, but records showed he was once found delinquent. McDonald was placed on probation in August 2013 shortly after his great-grandmother’s death, but he repeatedly violated it over the next five months with eight more arrests and positive drug screens.
He spent four months in early 2014 in the juvenile detention center as the court tried to figure out what to do with him. Though he took part in therapy, McDonald often
“He was more like a brother. A big piece of the family is gone because he was the life of the party. He kept everyone together and smiling.” — Tyniece Hunter, a younger cousin of Laquan McDonald
couldn’t control his anger in lockup and received multiple reprimands for fighting with peers, threatening staff and other infractions.
He won his freedom back in late May 2014 after a unique hearing involving judges in both the child welfare and delinquency sections of juvenile court. Though some professionals pushed for incarceration, McDonald was given another chance. He was to remain on probation with rigorous rules for school, curfew, counseling and other treatment.
Just weeks earlier, while still in lockup, he told a court clinician his life had been “hell,” that he did not have a single happy memory from his childhood. He said the worst thing to ever happen to him was being taken away from his mother. He feared ending up like his absent father, who he said was imprisoned for drugs.
If he could have three wishes, he said, it would be to start his life over, have enough money to live a decent life and “have my granny back.”
McDonald admitted he’d been “a follower for too long” and that it was “time to slow down.”
Reconstructing his final days
In the last several months of his life, McDonald and his sister lived with a young uncle in Englewood, away from the West Side neighborhood where they grew up.
That September, McDonald began attending Sullivan House, an alternative high school in the South Shore neighborhood. He was working as well. His therapist and adult mentor thought McDonald was doing better, though he still struggled at times with drug use, curfew violations and school disciplinary problems.
The court had given his mother unsupervised visits with the goal that both kids be returned to her care by May 2015.
But that was not to be.
McDonald was fatally shot on the night of Oct. 20, 2014, a Monday. Though a lot has been said about that night, it’s still unclear what he was doing in the Archer Heights neighborhood — a mostly Hispanic area not frequented by his family and friends.
The Tribune tried to reconstruct his final days. That last weekend, McDonald decided to hang out at an aunt’s home in the Lawndale neighborhood, more than 5 miles away from the shooting scene, according to records.
McDonald played basketball with his adult mentor that Sunday morning, according to attorney Jeffrey Neslund, who negotiated a $5 million payout from the city for the family without even filing a lawsuit. Two of the teen’s friends — Wilson and Poole — said they hung out with him that night in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood until around midnight.
A few hours later, around 3 a.m. that Monday, his aunt’s neighbor in Lawndale called 911 after she encountered him while parking her car behind her home. Yvette Patterson said McDonald told her he was locked out of his aunt’s house. He asked to borrow her car.
In a recent interview, Patterson told the Tribune that McDonald kept a safe distance and wasn’t aggressive, but she thought it a strange question since the two had never met. She called 911.
Patterson said police had the teen apologize to her. She declined to sign a complaint. She said police told her they were taking McDonald, who admitted being “high,” to nearby Mount Sinai Hospital for observation, but the Tribune has been unable to verify if that happened or if police instead let him go.
The previous week, McDonald served a school suspension for an ongoing dispute with a female student. He also talked back to a staff member. McDonald had apologized, and a meeting was planned that Monday at the school to lift the suspension. It was delayed by a day, though, because of a scheduling conflict with a caseworker.
His status at the school at the time of his death remains unclear. Van Dyke’s lawyers have suggested in court that McDonald might have been expelled that day. His mentor, though, reported seeing McDonald that morning in school. McDonald left school early, though, and stopped briefly by his uncle’s apartment in Englewood later that afternoon.
Something beyond rap sheet
McDonald was killed that night shortly after 9:45.
Several police officers had been trailing the teen, who was on foot, after receiving a 911 call that he had been breaking into vehicles in a trucking yard on the Southwest Side.
The officers, who had requested backup units equipped with Tasers to assist them, tried to corral McDonald with their police squads to keep him at bay. At one point, McDonald allegedly slashed the front tire of a squad with a knife and scratched the windshield, police said.
Van Dyke heard the radio dispatches capturing the police activity as he and his partner drove to the scene. Six seconds after exiting his squad car, prosecutors say, Van Dyke opened fire, emptying his gun. The only officer to fire his weapon that night, he was reloading when his partner told him to hold fire.
McDonald was pronounced dead on his way to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he had been born 17 years earlier. An autopsy report showed PCP in his system.
He is buried in a cemetery in west suburban Forest Park. His great-grandmother and an older male relative killed in Chicago gunfire three months after McDonald died are laid to rest there as well.
His mother has never spoken publicly about her son’s death, but other relatives complained about the frequent airing of the shooting video and said coverage of the case has been traumatizing.
“It’s very hard because we constantly have to think about it,” said Carlissa Hunter, a great-aunt who described McDonald as joyful and always positive. “We lose sleep. We wonder how his life would have been if he wasn’t killed.”
The family has also expressed concern at reports that the defense might call McDonald’s mother at trial to testify about the teen’s violent history — allowed because Van Dyke’s lawyers contend the officer acted in self-defense.
“It’s cruel and unusual punishment,” the Rev. Hunter, McDonald’s greatuncle, said of the defense strategy. “Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s morally right.”
No matter the trial’s outcome, the family has pleaded for any demonstrators to remain peaceful, and remain hopeful that McDonald’s legacy will be a catalyst for systemic police reform.
At his funeral at his great-uncle’s West Side Baptist church, his sister, Tariana, read a poem she wrote, while several uncles served as pallbearers. A number of teachers, probation officers, McDonald’s mentor and even a juvenile court judge attended the emotional services.
“Out of everything I read about Laquan McDonald’s life, what stands out most to me is when I reviewed the sign-in (guest) book at the funeral,” said Neslund, the family lawyer.
“This kid had an impact on people. He meant something to them . ... He wasn’t just this kid with all these arrests. They saw something beyond the rap sheet.”
Laquan McDonald once told a court clinician that if he could have three wishes, he would start his life over, have enough money to live a decent life and “have my granny back.”