SLEEPOVER NIGHTMARE
SHOT FIRED INTO HOUSE KILLS 11-YEAR-OLD GIRL ABOUT TO MAKE S’MORES WITH FRIENDS
It was a hot summer night, and the five girls were getting ready to make s’mores.
But Shamiya Adams and her pals weren’t sitting around a campfire in the forest — they were enjoying a slumber party inside an apartment on the West Side.
And before they could put their marshmallows in the microwave, a shot rang out.
The bullet — fired by a gunman in the street outside Friday night — flew across a vacant, grassy lot, through an open window and then a wall, striking 11-year-old Shamiya in the head, authorities said.
And just like that, Adams became the latest in a long line of child murder victims caught in the crossfire of Chicago gun violence.
“Every time we have a child that gets killed, they have signs that say ‘Don’t shoot, I want to grow up,’ well they mean that,” Shamiya’s great-grandmother Lourene Miller said Saturday night as around 150 weeping mourners gathered to pray at the murder scene.
“They want to grow up, and they have a right to grow up without somebody shooting them down like that — it’s crazy.”
Police Saturday had made no arrests but believe the shooting was spurred by a gang-related, drug-trafficking dispute.
The gunman fired a weapon from either a vacant lot or a building just southeast of where Shamiya was having her sleepover, in the 3900 block of West Gladys Avenue in West Garfield Park, Harrison District Cmdr. Glenn Evans said.
Visibly upset by the murder of the innocent girl, Evans vowed his officers will find whoever killed her.
“We’re not going to give up on this,” he said. “We’re going to relentlessly see this through. I mean it.”
The shot through a slightly open window was “one of the most incredible shots I’ve ever seen,” he added as a dozen officers searched for shell casings.
Shamiya was the 33rd child victim of homicide in Chicago this year, adding her name to a depressingly long list that in recent years includes innocents such as Hadiya Pendleton and Jonylah Watkins.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who visited Shamiya’s family Saturday afternoon, said at an unrelated event Saturday that Chicago is “a better city than that . . . We’re a better people than that.”
More than 150 of Shamiya’s friends, family and neighbors gathered at the intersection of Springfield and Gladys Saturday to remember how she loved to dance and spend time with her family.
Shamiya has a twin brother and a 12-year-old brother and was prone to waiting up for her mom just because she wanted to say “hi” before bed, her great-grandmother said.
The girl’s mother, Shaneetha Goodloe, rested her head on a relative’s shoulder and sobbed as people prayed for her baby.
Her pastor, the Rev. George W. Daniels, told the crowd, “One of our precious jewels has been taken from us.”
Other religious leaders and politicians including U.S. Rep. Danny Davis also called for peace on the West Side and prayed whoever pulled the trigger is caught. Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) said a $8,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the killer’s capture.
Earlier Saturday, hours after Shamiya was pronounced dead at Mount Sinai Hospital, the parents who hosted the sleepover cried on their porch as they remembered the girl they considered a daughter.
“It’s senseless,” said Aaron Hill, whose daughter Sharonda was best friends with Shamiya. The girls were classmates at Melody Elementary School on their way to sixth grade.
Inside the house, Hill pointed to the small hole the errant and deadly bullet left in a bedroom closet.
On the other side of the closet, a blood stain marked the spot where Shamiya was sitting with her friends when she was hit, Hill said.
On the bed, the marshmallows, Capri Sun, chocolate and fruit snacks the girls had planned to feast on remained on the bed, untouched Saturday afternoon.
Shamiya’s cousin, Terrence Redmond, 32, said what everyone was thinking.
“If you can’t even be at home,” he said, “where can you be safe?”