Ernest Willingham testified before the U.S. Senate last month about growing up in Chicago with gun violence literally surrounding him. His father, brother and cousin have all been shot and his best friend killed. He’s been to “more funerals than weddings,” he said.
Now, a niece and another close friend have been shot since his June 15 testimony. The shootings have begun to feel like falling dominoes, Willingham said.
“I feel bad that we have to experience these things at such a young age,” he told the Tribune this week.
His niece was shot while sitting on the couch at home on June 20. The friend was struck by random bullets four times while waiting for food in his car on June 22.
For 19-year-old Willingham — whose best friend, Jahnae Patterson, was killed by stray bullets at 17 years old – gun violence feels like a “constant, constant, constant cycle.”
“We can’t even get food. We can’t even sit at home,” he said.
Willingham’s 17-year-old niece was sitting in the living room the day after Father’s Day when the doorbell rang, he said. Suddenly, bullets started coming through the window. One struck her in both legs.
The girl was discharged from Mount Sinai Hospital, but her family is displaced and hasn’t been able to return to their North Lawndale home for fear of more violence, Willingham said. After experiencing numbness, she went back to the hospital and discovered the bullet hit a major blood vessel, he added. A 37-year-old man was killed in the shooting, Willingham and police said.
Willingham declined to share his niece’s name because of those same safety concerns. The Tribune confirmed that details in Willingham’s description of the incident match police reports for a shooting that same day.
Two days later, Willingham’s friend Eryk Brown was shot.
When Willingham heard about the shooting, he thought about how much they had in common. Both studied hard in school. Both left the city for college. Both plan to work in the medical field, inspired by the inequities they’ve seen. Their shared goals brought them together.
“Wow, that could have been me,” Willingham remembered thinking.
Brown was parked outside a Calumet Heights vegan restaurant waiting for food when he heard gunshots.
“I looked into the rearview mirror, and I see blood on my face,” Brown said. He realized he had been shot as he pulled away.
As the 21-year-old drove himself to Advocate Trinity Hospital, his friends were panicking. Another 20-year-old friend in his car had been shot in the hand, he said. Brown, a University of Wisconsin at Madison nursing student on a full-ride scholarship, said he was thinking about his dreams of becoming a nurse on the way to the hospital.
Bullets hit Brown’s left leg three times, grazed his right leg once and grazed his back twice. His car was shot 18 times, he said. Brown’s using crutches because he can’t put weight on his legs. He has no idea why the shooting happened, he said.
Meanwhile, Brown’s 17-year-old cousin was shot and killed while riding a CTA bus last week, he said.
[ 2 men shot, 1 fatally, on a bus in West Garfield Park, police say ]
Brown said he thinks that Chicago’s gun violence stems in part from an unequal distribution of school resources. He went to a selective school, where he got care and help applying for college.
“A lot of these kids don’t see those things,” Brown said.
The threat of gun violence always loomed when he was growing up in North Lawndale, he said. He stayed away from crowds and checked his surroundings. He heard gunshots and stories of friends of friends being shot.
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Now, he feels like he has to leave Chicago.
“If you stay here, it’s unsafe for you, you feel like you’re going to be a victim, if you aren’t already a victim,” Brown said.
Willingham, a third-year student at Boston’s Northeastern University, said he struggles with those same fears as he weighs his safety and dreams for his future. He plans to become a doctor and received early acceptance into the Icahn School of Medicine Mount Sinai in New York this week.
“We’re just trying to get careers, go off to college, grad school and come back to fill in the gap for what’s been missing, what we didn’t have,” Willingham said. “But we’re unable to do that if we’re hurt.”
Willingham had previously told the Tribune that he wanted to live outside Chicago in the future because of gun violence. But now he’s having second thoughts. After Brown and his niece were shot, he said he feels an even more pressing responsibility to care for the people here.
