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[IL] CTA Shooting Kills Teen

 
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 10:02 am    Post subject: [IL] CTA Shooting Kills Teen Reply with quote

CTA Shooting Kills Teen
Gunman opened fire on Roseland bus, injuring 4 other Julian High School students

Chicago Tribune, May 11, 2007
By Angela Rozas and Emma Graves Fitzsimmons, Tribune staff reporters
Tribune staff reporter Dan P. Blake contributed to this report

A young man who boarded a CTA bus in Chicago's Roseland neighborhood opened fire Thursday afternoon, killing one student and injuring four others, officials said.

The man got on an eastbound 103rd Street bus at Halsted Street and pulled a gun as the bus neared Lowe Avenue about 3:15 p.m., police said. He opened fire, wounding three girls and two boys, between the ages of 16 and 18, who were students at nearby Julian High School. The bus driver pulled over, and the gunman got off the bus and ran southbound, police said. Three of the wounded students were taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where one boy, Blair Holt, who had been shot in the chest, died Thursday night, hospital officials said. Two girls were in fair condition.

Holt's mother, Annette Holt, is a Chicago Fire Department captain, said department spokeswoman Eve Rodriguez. Another student who was shot on the bus is the daughter of a Chicago firefighter, she said.

One student was taken to Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park and another to Roseland Community Hospital, a Chicago Fire Department spokeswoman said. Their injuries were not believed to be life threatening, police said.

Police said they did not believe it was a random shooting and were reviewing footage from a camera inside the bus.

"We have very good information, and we're confident we'll be able to identify him," Assistant Deputy Police Supt. Eugene Williams said Thursday evening.

Police said officers would fan out across the South Side neighborhood on Friday, and school officials planned to have additional security and counseling staff at Julian.

A man heading home from work said he was driving near 103rd and Lowe as the passengers fled the bus.

"I saw a bunch of kids leaving the bus ... they looked scared," said Oscar Hamon. "Everyone jumped off the bus running scared and crying. I knew something was wrong."

CTA officials were working with police in the investigation, including providing the camera footage. Each bus has at least four cameras on board, said CTA spokeswoman Sheila Gregory.

"The security cameras have proven very helpful in the past when we've investigated incidents," she said.

News of the shooting spread during a student fashion show Thursday night at Julian, which is about a mile from the site of the shooting.

School Principal William Harris said he was receiving calls from parents, but would not comment because he did not have confirmed information about the shooting. He did emphasize that the shooting did not happen at the school.

Many Julian students take the 103rd Street bus home, said 18-year-old senior Marissa Brown.

"Everybody takes the bus home," she said. "They were just going home after school."

Brown, a friend of Holt's, said Holt was a popular student known for dressing well and making people smile. He enjoyed rap music.

"I couldn't believe it," Brown said of hearing that her childhood friend had died. "He was nice. He was fun. He just made everybody laugh."

Brown said she feared going to school on Friday because someone might retaliate.

Speculation swirled about the cause of the shooting. Some students said there was a fight at the school on Wednesday. Others lamented what they said was an ongoing gang feud in the school, while others said it was in the neighborhood.

Sophomore Dimico Galloway, 15, said one of the victims is a friend and he saw her shortly before her last class ended before 3 p.m. He said the high school was safe, and that fights can happen at any school.
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 10:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bus Victim Hailed as Hero
Students sad, angry after shooting

Chicago Tribune, May 12, 2007
By Azam Ahmed, Tracy Dell'Angela and Mary Owen, Tribune staff reporters

Tiara Reed was sitting near her friend Blair Holt on the bus packed with Julian High School students when the man started shooting.

As the bullets flew, Reed got up and tried to run to the back of the bus, but Holt pushed her down in the seat, witnesses said Friday, a day after the shooting.

Falling back, Reed's right leg flew up above the seats, a bullet passed through her foot and remained in her shoe.

Holt, trying to get to the back of the bus, was struck in the abdomen by a bullet.

As Holt, a popular 16-year-old Julian student, lay bleeding in the bus with a fatal wound, his mother later learned, he told paramedics to tell his parents that he loved them.

Reed's mother, Janet, said Friday that her daughter told her how Blair pushed her down when the shooting started.

"She definitely realized it could have been her," Janet Reed said "He saved her."

On Friday, police were searching the South Side Roseland neighborhood for a 16-year-old boy in connection with the after-school bus shooting that killed Holt and injured four others, Chicago Police Supt. Philip Cline said. Investigators are unsure of a motive but suspect the incident may be gang-related. None of those injured were believed to be the target, Cline said.

Officials are looking into a possible connection between the shooter and the April 10 slaying of another Julian student.

"We believe it's gang-related, but we won't know until we bring him in and talk to him," Cline said before the department's bi-monthly March Against Violence.

Police searched several homes of the boy's family Friday but declined to say what was found.

Cline said one of the victims has been released from the hospital; three others are in stable or good condition. Additional police officers were stationed at the high school as a result of Thursday's shooting, he said.

"How does a 16-year-old so easily get a handgun?" Cline said. "It's something we have to face. How do we keep guns out of young people's hands."

Schools Chief Arne Duncan said Holt is the 20th student to die this school year from gun violence. He said the brazen brutality and random nature of the bus shooting left him "furious and heartbroken."

"It's just unimaginable to me, the level of violence we're seeing," Duncan said on the steps outside Julian, minutes after visiting with counselors and students during the lunch hour. "Our students shouldn't have to worry about going to and from school on a bus."

Holt was remembered Friday as a popular and responsible student, the son of Fire Department Captain Annette Nance-Holt and Chicago Police Officer Ronald Holt.

On Friday, Nance-Holt said paramedics stopped by their home to pay their respects.

"He told the paramedics, 'Tell my mom and dad I love them,'" she said, wiping her tears as she spoke. "It's like he knew he might not make it."

She said her son had been looking forward to his birthday, June 1, when he would have turned 17. In his room, shoes lined the foot of the bed and colorful hats rested on top of a television.

"He loved fashion," she said. "He matched his pants, shirts and hats with his Jordans."

"He was the kind of kid that if I could have gone shopping and picked one out, it would have still been him. He was my best friend."

The teens who knew him struggled to reconcile why something violent happened to Blair Holt, who stayed away from violence and gang activity.

"He was just an innocent person," said Rodney Daily, 17. "He never had anything to do with that stuff."

Other friends talked about his openness and warmth, and his ability to make friends across social boundaries.

"Blair would talk with everybody, even the people that didn't hang out with us," Akelia Reed said. "He was such a goofy and funny person, always cracking jokes."

Akelia Reed, who is not related to Tiara Reed, was also on the bus during the shooting, though she was not injured. She said Friday that she saw a young man she vaguely recognized get on the bus at Halsted and 103rd Streets.

"He got on the bus and just started shooting and kept shooting until he got off the bus," she said. "I was shocked. I didn't know what to think."

Akelia Reed saw Holt reach over for Tiara Reed, who was trying to get up and run.

"He covered her, pushed her back and then got hit," she said.

Akelia Reed stayed with Holt and Tiara Reed on the bus after they were shot, waiting for the ambulances.

"When I saw him bleeding I didn't know what to do," she said. "I was just holding his hand to try and keep him awake."

There are nearly 2,000 students at Julian, and their troubles flow both ways: School fights carry over into the street, and the neighborhood battles spill back into the hallways. The teens here express both resignation at the violence they face and fury at the adults around them who don't seem to know how to stop it.

Senior Yasmeen Emerson cried as she walked up the front steps at Julian on Friday morning. She's growing numb to the gunplay around the neighborhood. "You get used to it after a while," she said.

Junior Markita Morgan stood across the street with two of her friends, watching as school officials mingled with the dozen police officers stationed outside. She described ongoing conflicts between two rival gangs that escalated in and around the school during the last year. "They don't even try to do anything about it," she said of school leaders.

Julian, which attracts students from working- and middle-class families, is not the most dangerous high school in the city. Last year, the school reported about 100 violent incidents, typical among the city's large neighborhood schools. Principal William Harris acknowledged there are "disruptive influences" in his school but doesn't think the school could have done anything different to prevent the shootings that killed two students in one month.

Hundreds of students poured into the school in the morning, but no one was rushed to class. Mostly, they gathered in groups in the hallways, talking with friends and crying over the loss of a peaceful and fun-loving teenager who died trying to save his friend.

During one emotional meeting with school leaders, students yelled in frustration and accused them of being visible only when the news crews appear.

"Students here are very angry, and they have every right to be," said Duncan, who visited Julian for about 40 minutes Friday morning.

The district's short-term fixes -- a team of grief counselors, a bigger police presence around the campus and on CTA buses -- could help Julian students cope with this latest crisis. But it's not going to solve the deeper problems that drive students to respond violently to even the most minor grievances, Duncan acknowledged.

"We've had 20 kids killed by guns this year," he said. "Putting police officers on the buses is not the answer."


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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 10:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

2 Teens Charged in Killing on Bus
Longtime feud tied to bystander's death

Chicago Tribune, May 14, 2007
By Carlos Sadovi, Hal Dardick and Andrew L. Wang, Tribune staff reporters

A CTA bus shooting that killed a Julian High School student and wounded four others resulted from a long-festering feud between two members of the same street gang, law-enforcement sources said Sunday.

The sources revealed details about the slaying of Blair Holt, 16 -- described as an innocent victim who died saving a friend's life -- shortly after the arrests of two Chicago teenagers in Thursday's shooting.

Michael Pace, 16, who is alleged to have fired the shots on the Chicago Transit Authority bus, and Kevin Jones, 15, who is alleged to have given Pace the .40-caliber semiautomatic weapon he used, were each charged as adults with one count of murder and five counts of attempted murder.

One of the counts of attempted murder relates to the uninjured target, said Tandra Simonton, a spokeswoman for the Cook County state's attorney's office.

Pace and his intended target, who was in the back seat of the bus but was not shot, feuded for years before the shooting, which police believe was not related to gang activity, the sources said.

The feud started with a disagreement over a girl, one source said.

"I think they have forgotten why it started," the source said. "It's just bad blood."

None of the victims was a gang member, the sources said. "They were just innocent bystanders," one source said.

As police were first announcing the arrests, Holt's father Ronald, a Chicago police officer, recalled how he and his son decided on a special Mother's Day gift for Annette Nance-Holt, a Chicago firefighter who recently won a promotion to captain.

They planned to buy a medallion in the form of Nance-Holt's firefighter's badge, and Ronald Holt was in a novelty store making that plan reality Thursday afternoon when his wife called him.

"She told me what happened, and I just couldn't believe it at first, but I knew it wasn't a joke," Ronald Holt told the congregation Sunday in Sweet Holy Spirit Church on the South Side.

Instead of joining his son to give Nance-Holt that medallion Sunday, he spoke of his family's grief, commented on the arrests and outlined initial plans to lobby for stronger gun laws.

"It moves us closer to some closure in the matter," Ronald Holt said of the arrests after appearing at the service with Bishop Larry Trotter, the church's senior pastor. "I'm sad right now that our kid is not here, but the law has prevailed."

Ronald Holt, like the sources, said that Jones provided the gun and that Pace did the shooting. Pace had been expelled from Julian High School, which Blair Holt attended, and placed in an alternative school, Ronald Holt said. "Blair did not know that individual," he added.

Evidence against the two teenagers includes a confession from Jones, two surveillance videotapes and statements from 11 witnesses, the sources said, giving the following account of the incident and subsequent investigation:

Jones told police he gave Pace the gun and a hooded sweat shirt shortly before the incident -- which occurred about 3:15 p.m. on an eastbound 103rd Street bus near Lowe Avenue -- knowing what Pace intended to do with the weapon.

The gun had only four rounds in it, and Pace allegedly fired them all after running onto the bus at Halsted Street. After unloading the weapon, he allegedly ran off the bus. The bullet casings, but not the weapon, have been recovered.

When picked up by police, Pace asked for an attorney and refused to talk to police. Both he and Jones are expected to appear Monday in Bond Court.

Of the other four students who were injured on the crowded bus after school let out, one girl is still in the hospital, where she is being treated for a gunshot wound in the chest and is expected to survive.

Sources said Pace, Jones and three other gang members waited for the bus, though the other three gang members thought Pace merely intended to get into a fistfight with his foe, whom police have yet to locate. Those three gang members gave statements to police.

Surveillance cameras on the bus and at a nearby currency exchange captured images of the crime, and witnesses picked Pace and Jones out of police lineups, sources said.

The three, like the two charged, are believed to be current or former students at Julian.

Another Julian student was slain last month, and Blair Holt was the 20th Chicago Public Schools student to die this year from guns, according to schools chief Arne Duncan.

Trotter called on other clergy and volunteers to ride a CTA bus Monday morning from the 95th Street station to Julian.

"We want these young people to know that they should have no fear, they should have no fear riding to school," Trotter said.

Witnesses said Blair Holt sustained his fatal wound in he abdomen while protecting friend Tiara Reed, whom he pushed back down into her seat as bullets flew. She sustained a wound in her foot.

As Blair Holt lay bleeding on the bus, he told paramedics to tell his parents that he loved them, his mother later said, recounting what they told her.

"It seems like we're besieged with what I call neighborhood terrorists," said Ronald Holt, a gang unit officer who said another teenager who lived on his block was slain by gunfire. "We have so much gang-related shooting in the African-American community."

He said he would lobby in his son's name for further state gun restrictions. The goal of what could be called Blair's Law, he said, would "be to try to find some way to make it more difficult for these guns to end up in the hands of the wrong people."

One possibility, he said, is to seek more extensive background checks for someone to obtain an Illinois firearm owner's identification card. More extensive checks might even include looking into the associates of those who seek the gun permits, he said.

Though Ronald Holt seemed to fight back tears as he talked to reporters about the shooting, he credited his faith in God with the composure he maintained as he talked to the congregation.

"I'm more concerned right now with his mom," he said. "She was too overcome with grief to come here today. This woman is in deep sorrow and deep pain."

"Blair was our treasure," he said. "He was our only child. ... It's in God's hands, and we know there's a bigger plan to this."

A visitation for Holt is set for 10 a.m. Friday in Salem Baptist Church, 11800-24 S. Indiana Ave. Services follow at 11 a.m.
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 10:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Live Video - Teens Charged in Bus Shooting
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 10:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Slain Teen's Father, Clergy Call for Gun Control

Chicago Tribune. May 14, 2007
By Alexa Aguilar
Tribune staff reporter

The father of a teenager slain while riding a CTA bus joined with 10 clergy members on a symbolic bus ride this morning, calling for stricter gun laws and a greater community presence on local buses and the streets.

The CTA bus, which departed at 7 a.m. from the 95th and State Streets terminal, was crowded with ministers who prayed and sang hymns until they reached Julian High School, where Blair Holt, 16, was a student.

Ronald Holt, Blair's father and a Chicago police officer, rode the bus along with the ministers. He said he hopes that Blair's death will lead to a push for stricter gun laws.

For him and his wife, the loss of their only child is overwhelming, he said. "There can never be complete closure. We just have to endure," Holt said.

Two teenagers have been charged in the shooting last Thursday that killed Blair and wounded four other Julian students. The suspects are scheduled to be in Bond Court later today.

The attack resulted from a long-festering feud between two members of the same street gang, law-enforcement sources have said. Blair was an innocent victim who died saving a friend's life, according to police.

Twelve Chicago Public Schools students have been killed going to and from school this school year, said Bishop Larry Trotter of Sweet Holy Spirit Church on the South Side, who joined the elder Holt on this morning's bus ride. Trotter said something must be done to ensure that students feel safe.

"We have to start somewhere," he said.

Holt and the clergy called for programs that would encourage community members and parents to be a visible presence on CTA buses and on the streets after school.

Describing their neighborhoods as "under siege," they called on lawmakers to enact tougher controls on the availability of handguns.
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2007 10:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Photo Gallery: CTA Bus Shooting Unites Community

Graphic: Location of CTA Bus Shooting
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PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 8:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Teens March to Stop 'Bullets Flying'
In day of activism, the parents of teen killed in bus shooting join hundreds of students as they walk out of Julian High to call for an end to violence

Chicago Tribune, May 15, 2007
By Alexa Aguilar, Emma Graves Fitzsimmons and Angela Rozas
Tribune staff reporters

Blair Holt's parents went to Julian High School on Monday morning hoping to dissuade students from participating in a planned walkout in protest of the death of their son.

When the doors opened, the students streamed out of Julian—first by the dozens, and then into the hundreds—carrying signs that read "One is too many" and "R.I.P. Blair."

Moved by the sheer numbers, Holt's parents joined the march they had hoped to stop, swept along by the dual currents of grief and outrage.

Holt, a 16-year-old student at Julian, was shot to death Thursday, one of five students hit by a spray of bullets when one gang member opened fire at another on a CTA bus, police said.

At 103rd Street and Lowe Avenue, where the bus came to a rest after the shooting, Holt's father, Ronald, a Chicago police officer, raised his hands, and the crowd fell silent. He told the students that although he and Holt's mother were touched by the gesture, the students were safest back in school.

"Will you do that for me?" he asked, so quietly only the closest students could hear. The students agreed, and most returned to school.

While Holt's parents and students called for intervention, across town, two teens charged with Holt's murder and five counts of attempted murder appeared in Bond Court.

Dressed in hooded sweat shirts, sneakers and baggy jeans, the teens, who were charged as adults because of the seriousness of the crime, wept after prosecutors detailed a rift between them and the intended target on the bus, a gang member who was not injured.

Prosecutors said that Michael Pace, 16, planned to shoot a gang rival on the bus and that Kevin Jones, 15, gave Pace the semi-automatic gun used in the shooting, acting as a lookout while Pace fired on the crowded bus.

They stood with heads bowed as a judge ordered Pace held without bail and Jones held in lieu of $750,000. Family members watched, some in tears.

Students call for action

At Julian, earlier in the day, students were facing yet another empty classroom seat. This time, they responded with a plan, spread by e-mail and text messages. Just after 10 a.m., they walked.

They called for increased police presence in their community, on their buses and in their school. School officials said 250 students were identified as taking part in the march. A police officer on the scene estimated the number at three times that.

Brittney Reynolds, one of the student organizers, said she felt shaky and nervous as the march approached, and she geared up to walk out of class.

Reynolds kept thinking of her friend Blair Holt who was shot as he tried to keep another student away from the gunfire, witnesses said.

"This is for him," she said, as they marched. She and other friends distributed letters calling for an end to violence in her neighborhood.

"We had to make a stand," senior Joshua Madden said. "We're supposed to be worrying about getting a job and deciding where we're going to school. We're worried about bullets flying."

"It was a way to show Blair that we care," sophomore Dajanee Seals said. "He died a hero. We have to walk. It's the only way to get anyone's attention, and we have to do something."

Ronald Holt, a 17-year police veteran, said he's dealt with enough senseless violence to desensitize him, but the death of his only son, an aspiring rapper known as "Bizzy B" and an honor roll student, left him reeling.

He spent the day as an activist, first taking a symbolic ride on the CTA bus with local clergy and then marshaling the Julian students, but Ronald Holt said that underneath his public speeches, he's broken.

"I am so overwhelmed," he said. "I appear to be OK, but my emotions are spent."

Both parents said they plan to push for greater restrictions on gun accessibility.

"We are going to fight to get these streets safer," said Annette Nance-Holt, a Chicago Fire Department captain who wore one of her son's T-shirts and his school ID badge.

Also lost a son

Later, Pace's mother returned home from the hearing without her son, who was ordered to return to the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center.

She said she didn't realize what her son was involved in until it was too late. Now, she says she has lost her son too.

"I cried all day. I still cry," said Harris, 36. "Not just for him, but for the victims. My heart goes out to all of them."

Her son was a sophomore in the special education program at Julian High School because he couldn't read, she said. Pace was taking a computer class through the Job Corps training program but was running with the wrong crowd, she said.

Calumet Area Deputy Chief Michael Shields said Jones, who school officials said is a student at Fenger High School, admitted handing Pace the .40-caliber gun used in the shooting shortly before the bus arrived.

His mother, Karen Jones, said her son gave in to peer pressure to provide Pace with the gun.

Pace turned himself in to police Saturday at a White Castle parking lot after a friend, believing Pace to be suicidal, negotiated the surrender with retired police Sgt. Walter Perkins. Perkins said Pace asked to call his mother before turning himself in.

"He was frightened," he said. "Crying."

Officer gives account

Pace and Jones planned the shooting beforehand, Calumet Area Cmdr. Eddie Welch said. Pace, who school officials said was removed from Julian High in February, went to the bus stop Thursday expecting the rival gang member to be riding the bus from school.

Prosecutors said Jones got the gun from another gang member and gave it to Pace, along with a hooded sweat shirt with animal characters.

As Pace stood waiting for the bus, the rival gang member, who prosecutors said was sitting in the middle of the bus flashed a gang-sign out of the window, Shields said. Pace then got on the bus and fired, striking five bystanders, but not the gang member he was aiming at, Shields said. Prosecutors said that Jones stood on the sidewalk during the shooting, acting as a lookout, and that after the shooting, the two ran away together.

Police said the feud between the gang members is long-standing. A law enforcement source said that the feud started over a girl two years ago but that Thursday's shooting was prompted by a more recent incident. The day before the shooting, the source said, the gang member targeted in the shooting and others drove to a gas station at 103rd and Aberdeen Streets, a hangout of Jones and Pace's gang, to harass them. The source said Jones shot at the group that day but didn't strike anyone.

Welch said police are still investigating how Jones got the gun, which has not been found. Both teens have a juvenile arrest record , Welch said, though he did not provide details.

The shooting prompted Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan to demand better gun-control laws, lamenting that 20 CPS students have been killed in the last year.

"Right now, we value our right to bear arms more than we value our children," he said.

Jones' mother said she knew there were too many guns in her community. The unemployed mother moved her 11 children from the Roseland neighborhood to escape violence, but her son still spent time with his old friends there, she said.

"These days, these children . . . there's no fist fighting anymore. It's just guns," said Karen Jones, 43. "They have to prove themselves."
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PostPosted: Mon May 21, 2007 12:49 pm    Post subject: Thousands mourn teen killed on bus Reply with quote

Thousands mourn teen killed on bus
War on guns takes stage at memorial

Chicago Tribune, May 19, 2007
By Alexa Aguilar
Tribune staff reporter

Blair Holt was killed saving a young life on a city bus last week. But the 16-year-old's heroic example could save many more lives, eulogists told more than 2,000 mourners who gathered Friday to honor him.

The shooting of the Julian High School honor student, who pushed his classmate out of the path of gunfire before he was struck himself, should galvanize a community fed up with gun violence, they said.

"This is a divine moment in front of us," said Rev. Michael Pfleger during funeral services at the House of Hope, 752 E. 114th St. "I pray to God we're not so stupid as to miss it."

Tiara Reed, whom Blair is credited with saving, sat in a wheelchair near his family, her leg encased in a bright pink cast from a gunshot wound. She started to sob as a soloist sang the opening lyrics to "Hero."

There's a hero/If you look inside your heart/You don't have to be afraid

The son of a firefighter and a police officer, Blair was killed May 10 while he was riding home from Julian High on a CTA bus. An armed teen boarded the bus and aimed for a gang member in the back of the bus, police said. Tiara and three other students were injured in the gunfire.

Two Chicago teens, Michael Pace, 16, and Kevin Jones, 15, have been charged in the shootings.His death has mobilized his classmates, city and school leaders and activists throughout Chicago who said his senseless killing should be a call to action, and a reminder of the dozens of young people who die violently each year.

High school students staged walkouts and marches this week to demand more security in their schools and neighborhoods. Prominent Chicago clergy and community leaders pointed to Blair's death as another example of why stricter gun laws are needed.

"Blair attracts us because he wasn't a gangbanger," Rev. Jesse Jackson told the mourners, which included hundreds of Julian students. "His blood wasn't full of drugs. The gun wasn't in his hands."

By midmorning, hundreds of mourners had filed into House of Hope in anticipation of the 11 a.m. service. A phalanx of uniformed firefighters and police officers lined up at attention in two columns leading to the front door, creating a pathway for Blair's parents as they entered the building.

Many of the attendees didn't know the Holts but came to show their support.

"This was more than a duty," said DeWayne Smoots, a lieutenant with the Milwaukee Fire Department and regional director for the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters.

Blair was a special child, Smoots said, and his "chivalry" and death could be the spark for change.

Akita Banks-White had just returned home to Chicago for the summer from Spelman College when she heard about Blair's death, she said. She didn't know Blair, but the college junior said she felt compelled to pay her respects.

"The violence is totally unnecessary," she said. "To shoot up a public bus ... there's something not right with the youth in our society."

Jackson, Rev. James Meeks, pastor of Salem Baptist Church, and other speakers decried the damaging effects of guns and told those assembled they are planning a march on Chicago gun shops later this month.

Jackson asked the Julian students to stand if they knew someone who had died of drug use, brought a gun to school or considered suicide. Each time, dozens of students rose.

Young people must be willing to speak up if they see a classmate with a gun or drugs, Jackson said. If not, they risk another classmate's death, he said.

"It's Blair today, and Joe or Mary tomorrow," Jackson said.

But as much as Friday's service was a call to stop gun violence, it also revolved around the 16-year-old junior who was known for his love of clothes and shoes, the rap music he created and devotion to friends and family.

His father, Ronald Holt, a member of a police gang crime unit, described witnessing the birth of his only child and whispering to the new baby in his arms, then watching him take his first step, catch his first baseball and grow and mature.

"We loved and valued him so much," Holt said. He then presented Blair's mother, Annette Nance-Holt, with a firefighter medallion and Mother's Day card that Blair had picked out for her just days before his death.

While the eulogists spoke, images of Blair -- as a teen and as a baby -- flashed on projection screens suspended above the pulpit. Posters with handwritten wishes from classmates to "Bizzy B" bracketed the casket.

Paula Jackson, Blair's physical education teacher at Julian, estimated that half of the student body was in attendance, many wearing T-shirts with Blair's picture and messages such as "Only the good die young" and "R.I.P." The Julian High band and choir lined the stage behind the pulpit to sing gospel songs.

Her students are struggling with Blair's death, Paula Jackson said.

"They are devastated," she said. The day after the shooting, "I couldn't face them."

While many in the crowd lauded Blair's final act as heroic, it's an action that mourners wish he had never had to take.

"We don't want our children to die as heroes," said Rufus Williams, president of the Chicago Public Schools Board. "We want them to live as heroes. We want them to live."
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ripta42
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PostPosted: Mon May 21, 2007 12:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Video: Funeral Held for Slain Teen
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ripta42
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Age: 44
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Location: Pawtucket, RI / Woburn, MA

PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 9:39 am    Post subject: 2 teens indicted in fatal CTA shooting Reply with quote

2 teens indicted in fatal CTA shooting

Chicago Tribune, June 6, 2007
Tribune staff report

A Cook County grand jury has indicted two teens charged as adults in the killing of a Julian High School student and the wounding of four others aboard a CTA bus a month ago.

The indictments against Michael Pace, 16, and Kevin Jones, also 16, on charges of first-degree murder, attempted murder and aggravated battery with a firearm were announced in court today.

Pace is alleged to have fired the shot that killed Blair Holt, 16, and Jones is alleged to have given Pace the gun he used.

Each previously has been charged as an adult with one count of murder and five counts of attempted murder.

The slaying of Holt, whose father is a Chicago police officer and mother a Chicago fire captain, struck an unusually deep chord, prompting renewed efforts to stem anti-gang violence. His funeral attracted thousands. He was the 20th Chicago Public Schools student to die this year from guns, according to Chicago Public Schools officials.

Police have said that the shooting that claimed his life was the result of a long-festering feud between Pace and his intended target, who was in the back seat of the bus but was not shot.

All of the victims on the bus were innocent bystanders. None was a gang member.

Evidence against the two teenagers includes a confession from Jones, two surveillance videotapes and statements from 11 witnesses, police sources have said.

According to sources, Jones told police he gave Pace the gun and a hooded sweat shirt shortly before the incident— which occurred May 10 about 3:15 p.m. on an eastbound 103rd Street bus near Lowe Avenue—knowing what Pace intended to do with the weapon.

The gun had only four rounds in it, and Pace allegedly fired them all after running onto the bus at Halsted Street. After unloading the weapon, he allegedly ran off the bus.

Sources said Pace, Jones and three other gang members waited for the bus, though the other three gang members thought Pace merely intended to get into a fistfight with his foe. Those three gang members gave statements to police.

Surveillance cameras on the bus and at a nearby currency exchange captured images of the crime, and witnesses picked Pace and Jones out of police lineups, sources said.

Witnesses said Blair Holt sustained his fatal wound in the abdomen while protecting friend Tiara Reed, whom he pushed back down into her seat as bullets flew. She sustained a wound in her foot. Both are due back in court on June 26.
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