Ear Hustle

Chicago Teen Killed While Trying To Make Extra Money Shoveling Snow For Neighbors

Ronald-Hayes

 

A 17-year-old high school student who was earning money shoveling snow was shot to death on a sidewalk near his home on the Near West Side, according to police and his family.

Ronald Hayes was shot in the head in the 1300 block of West Hastings Street around 4:15 p.m. Sunday, according to Police News Affairs Officer Daniel O’Brien.

Officers found him outside an apartment complex just a few blocks from where he grew up and lived with his mother on West Washburne Avenue.

“He was a good kid,” his mother Kathy Booker said in an interview after she returned home from seeing her son’s body at the scene of the shooting. The Banner Academy West High School student “was very cheerful, joyful, playful. He loved to play with his brothers.”

Booker, 38, said her son — the fourth of nine children — was outside working, shoveling snow and putting down salt when he was shot. Hayes was scheduled to graduate from Banner Academy West High School at the beginning of June, she said, and he was going to take her to the prom.

Hayes aspired to go to college and become a police officer, Booker said. He loved math, music, basketball and Chief Keef and was known as “Duck,” according to friends and family.

Booker, the boy’s grandfather and several other family members went to the scene of the shooting and spoke to police across the street from where his body lay under a white sheet.

Neighbors stood back as police inspect the scene around Hayes’ body, lamenting how young the victim was.

After several hours, Hayes’ body was lifted onto a gurney after dark, and some of his family followed him to the Cook County morgue, his mother said.

Source: Chicago Tribune

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