Wil Lewis and his wife had lived in Chicago for about a year and had moved about two weeks ago to a home on Greenview Avenue in Rogers Park, a neighborhood they considered “safe enough,” his family said.

The 28-year-old from Wisconsin, a photographer by trade, was scheduled to start a new job Monday, a prospect he was “very excited” about, family said.

But, about 3:20 p.m. Saturday afternoon, that all changed. Lewis was on a North Side street when a man walked up to him and started firing shots, police said. Lewis was hit in the back and died within an hour at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston. According to the Cook County medical examiner’s office, he died of a gunshot wound to the back.

“We’re just numb,” said his father, Joseph Lewis, of Virginia, who was reached by telephone. “I’m operating on two hours of sleep and so is my wife. There’s not a lot anybody can say. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

“Somebody basically shot him dead. They felt it was a case of mistaken identity. Wil was not in the wrong.”

Lewis, of the 6600 block of North Greenview Avenue, was shot to death in the 1300 block of West Devon Avenue Saturday afternoon less than half a mile from his home, according to police, his family and authorities. That’s on the border between the city’s Edgewater and Rogers Park neighborhoods.

The shooter fled the scene on foot, police said. Witnesses at the scene said Lewis was standing at the bus stop before he was shot, but that has not been confirmed with police.

Police were questioning three persons of interest in the shooting and the gunman’s vehicle may have been recovered, according to police, citing preliminary information.

The motive for the shooting was unclear although police said there were some gang overtones. But, according to police, Lewis wasn’t the intended target.

Paul Humpal, Lewis’ father-in-law, said a police officer knocked on his door late Saturday night in Wisconsin to tell him the bad news. “They’re sure he is not the intended target,” Humpal said the police told him.

Wil Lewis was born in Guatemala and was adopted when he was 7, said his father.

“He came with really no educational background at all. He only spoke street Spanish, nothing formal. He couldn’t read or write. So growing up we were tri-lingual – English, Spanish and charades,” Lewis said, laughing.

Their family spent some time in California, but Wil mainly grew up in Sturgeon Bay in Wisconsin’s Door County. For his freshman and sophomore years, he attended Sturgeon Bay High School, where his father was the high school principal. When his father got another job at Kaukauna (Wis.) High School, he transferred there and graduated in 2005.

“He was a drummer for the choir, some track and wrestling … he tried a little bit of everything,”’ Joseph Lewis said. During college, he was a fine arts major with an emphasis in photography, said his father.

“He was a good guy with a great sense of humor. He loved to tease and joke around,”’ said his father, who last spoke with his son the day before he died, on July 11, his parents’ wedding anniversary.

Wil Lewis, was an “incredibly talented” photographer, said his sister-in-law, who did not want to be identified. She lives in Wisconsin and was the one to call her sister late last night to tell her of her husband’s death.

“He was basically right by home,” she said. “It’s likely he was just out doing errands … the thing is we don’t know.”

“He was a wonderful uncle … my kids absolutely adored him. He was incredibly loving, very generous and very helpful.”

Humpal, who has four daughters, had called his oldest daughter, who then had to call Lewis’ wife. She was in Madison, Wis., when her husband was shot, helping to host a birthday party for her 5-year-old nephew, Humpal’s grandson.

“She is devastated,” Humpal said. “She doesn’t know what she’s going to do without him.”

Source: Chicago Tribune

[AdSense-A]