After son shot dead, done with Rogers Park

Death video viral, neighborhood too painful, mom says

The mother of Angelo Pullum wants to move out of Rogers Park.

It’s an area she’s called home for about 30 years. But ever since her son was seen on a graphic viral video being gunned down on Lunt Avenue during an especially violent weekend in Chicago in late June, being in the neighborhood is too painful of a reminder of what happened to him.

“Everything I look at, I cry,” she said in a telephone interview Friday. “I haven’t been able to eat. I haven’t been able to sleep. And all I do is cry all the time because when I close my eyes, I just see that video of this guy shooting him in the back of the head.

“I’ve lost so much weight,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “I know I need to be strong, but I’m having a hard time coping with this. I really am because Angelo was my heart. He was everything to me.”

Pullum, who was 36, was among dozens shot during the last weekend in June, which contributed to a large spike in gun violence in Chicago in the first half of 2020, which in the first days of July has only gotten worse.

Through Sunday, the city’s 353 homicides was close to a 40% increase over this time last year, and overall shootings were up by 42%, official Chicago police statistics show.

Chicago police said Friday no one was in custody for Pullum’s June 28 killing, and detectives were investigating a possible gang- or drug-related motive for his death. But his mother, who declined to be identified for this story out of fear for her safety, said whatever brushes with the law her son had in his past “should not be held against him.”

His mother raised Pullum on her own, she said, and sometimes worked two jobs to support him while he was growing up. She described him as a sweet and loving son to whom she was very close. Five days before his death, Pullum bought his mother birthday gifts, taking her shopping for a bracelet and a pair of shoes. That was the last time she saw him.

“He always used to tell me, ‘You’re my mama and my father,’” she said. “The first time he did it, I said, ‘Honey, I’m not a father.’ He said, ‘Yes, you are, ma. You’re my mother and my father.‘”

She said she was touched by a makeshift memorial set up on Lunt Avenue for her son. She was approached by mourners who knew Pullum and talked about how he’d give them money at times if he could, or buy them food. One time, she said, Pullum and his friends put together a back-toschool barbecue in the neighborhood for children, buying them backpacks and school supplies.

“People said he’d give the shirt off his back,” Pullum’s mother said.

She described her son as a good cook, making baked macaroni and cheese, cornbread, smothered chicken wings and other dishes for his mother and other relatives, especially during holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Pullum’s mother said he wanted to start a record company. She said he was into promoting rap artists, and Pullum himself also dabbled into music. As a young man, he was a big fan of the late famous rappers Tupac Shakur and The Notorious

B.I.G.

“He was a good rapper. Believe me, he was good. I didn’t like some of the language he used. But he sounded just like the people on the radio,” Pullum’s mother said of him. “He was very talented with that.”

Statistically, Rogers Park overall is one of the safer areas of the city, though parts of it have had flare-ups of violence over the years. Pullum’s mother said he faced challenging times growing up in the neighborhood. As a kid, he got bullied and beat up, and some tried to “make him get involved in things that he didn’t want to get involved in.”

Pullum was shot at pointblank range in the back of the head just before 7 a.m. June 28 in the 1400 block of West Lunt, a leafy stretch of apartment buildings a few blocks from the lake in the North Side neighborhood. The gunman’s face is never visible in the video, which was apparently leaked online and shared on social media.

In the video, which is time-stamped 6:56 a.m., two men can be seen crossing Lunt together and weaving between parked cars before settling on a spot in front of a closed black iron gate in front of an apartment building.

They stand facing the street and chatting for about 30 seconds. Pullum, dressed in a black T-shirt and long black shorts, red sneakers and a red baseball cap worn backward, appears to be at ease with the man standing to his right. That man, dressed in royal blue sweatpants with white stripes and a black sweatshirt with the hood covering his head, can be seen rocking back and forth on his feet while they talk.

After about 30 seconds, when Pullum turned his head away from the man, the killer stepped back and pulled a silver semi-automatic handgun from his pocket or waistband, placed it at the back of Pullum’s head and fired once. Pullum collapsed against the fence gate, which swung inward. The other man trotted off into the street and disappeared at the right of the video frame.

Pullum was pronounced dead shortly thereafter at an area hospital. Chicago police urge anyone with information about the killing to call Area 3 detectives at 312-744-8261, or submit an anonymous tip to cpdtip.com.

A GoFundMe page was set up to pay for Pullum’s funeral arrangements.

On Friday, Pullum’s mother said the video has haunted her, especially since it’s made her son’s killing into such a public spectacle on the internet. She said she’s puzzled that anyone would do that to him.

“What did you get out of this? What was the purpose?” she said she’d like to ask the killer. “Please turn yourself in. Admit you’re wrong. … Whatever it was, you didn’t have to kill him, especially in a vicious way.”

— The mother of Angelo Pullum