A fire broke out in a home Feb. 28, 2021 in the 8600 block of South Hermitage Avenue in Gresham. | Chicago Fire Department
A 63-year-old was charged in their murders.
A 63-year-old man has been charged with murder and arson in a Gresham house fire that killed a mother and her young daughter last week.
Reginald Brown was arrested Tuesday in connection to the Feb. 28 blaze in the 8600 block of South Hermitage Avenue, Chicago police announced Wednesday.
Brown, of Gresham, was expected to appear in court Wednesday.
The victims were 10-year-old Porche Stinson Ford and her mother Ieashia Ford, 34, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Their deaths were classified as homicides “due to house fire due to arson,” the medical examiner’s office said.
The pair were taken to Little Company of Mary Hospital, where they were pronounced dead, officials said. The fire also injured four other adults, police said.
Neighbors told CBS2-Chicago that the fire broke out in the rear of the home where Ford and her daughter lived.
Williams at the Cubs Convention in 2019. | AP Photos
Scheduled to receive his second shot on Monday, Williams is torn: Should he go to Mesa? Is it safe? Is it the right thing to do?
So, you miss the sensory delights of live baseball, do you?
Just imagine how Billy Williams feels.
Seventeen and a half months. That’s how long the Cubs Hall of Famer, 82, has gone without the sights and sounds that have made his heart sing since he was a boy in Alabama.
“Baseball has been my life,” he said this week. “And if you don’t have it, it’s tough. It hurts. You miss it. I just miss it so much.”
Last March, Williams was a day or two away from a plane ride to Arizona, where he’d gone for spring training every year but one since 1957. This trip would be with his grandson, Christian Harris, an athlete himself who plays wide receiver at Indiana. It was going to be special.
Hearing talk about a strange, potentially lethal virus, though, Williams canceled his plans; he’d just have to catch the Cubs at Wrigley Field instead. But by the time the Cubs were back in business and asked him to come to the ballpark and throw out a first pitch, Williams wasn’t going anywhere — especially not with Shirley, his wife of 60 years, at home with him in Glen Ellyn and deeply in the throes of dementia.
“No way,” he said. “That, I couldn’t do.”
Billy and Shirley are scheduled to receive their second vaccination shots — Pfizer, for those of you scoring at home — on Monday. And Williams is torn: Should he go to Mesa? Is it safe? Is it the right thing to do?
If he doesn’t, he’ll continue to feel like a man without a team. Days feel like weeks, and weeks like months. It just doesn’t sit well.
“She’s still intaking food and she’s sleeping pretty good, and we have a couple people coming in and really taking good care of her,” he said. “That gives me the chance to do some things I want to do.”
What he does these days — for his own well-being — is get outside and walk around the block a couple of times. It’s what an old right fielder can muster.
“Got to try to keep the legs in shape,” he said.
Williams has been hit hard by the losses of so many ballplayers, many of them Hall of Famers, in recent months. Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Joe Morgan, Cubs teammate Glenn Beckert and others including — and especially — Hank Aaron, who came up a few miles from Williams in Mobile, Alabama. Williams knew about Aaron’s passing in January before the sad news got out because, well, that’s what happens when you’re dear friends.
Being around the game would help ease the hurt.
“But I just don’t know if I should,” he said. “It’s a hard decision, you know? People are still not wearing the mask. I wish they would. You’ve got to take it from the doctors and the people who know about this disease.”
And what about the Cubs? Are they going to be any good? Are they going to be great again while Williams is still watching?
“I want to see, and everybody wants to see, this team get back to the World Series,” he said. “If the ingredients are not there, I think [president of baseball operations] Jed Hoyer would do the job and get the people in to help out. But we’ve got the core.”
For what it’s worth, Williams still believes in Kris Bryant, Javier Baez, Anthony Rizzo — the stars in their walk years.
“All these people who were in the World Series in 2016, they know how to win,” he said. “Last year was a different year, a different year for everybody. But I think this year, knowing they’re going to play 162 games, the guys are ready for that. A lot of guys have fun when it’s their [walk] year. I think all the thoughts are good.”
And what else?
“I don’t want to just watch it on television anymore,” he said.
The Leighton Criminal Courthouse. | Sun-Times file
Johnny Shanklin was shot in the back and killed in the 2018 attack.
Prosecutors have filed a murder charge against a third man in connection to the 2018 shooting death of a 50-year-old blind man in Lawndale.
Deangelo Joyce was arrested Tuesday in Des Plaines after police identified him as a participant in the murder of Johnny Shanklin, Chicago police said in a news release Wednesday.
The 29-year-old Little Village resident was expected to appear in court later Wednesday.
Days after the shooting, prosecutors charged two members of the Traveling Vice Lords street gang with opening fire on a group of unarmed people April 24, 2018.
Demarcus Washington, Dureya Lark and a third man allegedly exited a car and fired 14 rounds, prosecutors said then. Shanklin was struck in the back by one of the bullets and died at a hospital.
Officers chased a car suspected in the shooting and recovered a 9mm pistol thrown from its window, prosecutors said then.
The driver of the car crashed at Cermak Road and St. Louis Avenue, where Washington and Lark were arrested, prosecutors said. At the time, a third suspect remained at large.
Court records show Joyce pleaded guilty in 2014 to aggravated battery of a police officer and was sentenced to boot camp.
Washington’s charges were reduced to possession of a firearm with a defaced serial number, court records state. He was found not guilty of the charge in 2019.
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With the Stars allowing fans into the arena, a crowd of 4,211 was on hand to watch Patrick Kane’s milestone game Tuesday. | Getty
With 4,211 people allowed inside American Airlines Center for the game, Hawks fans from across Texas and elsewhere gathered in Dallas on Tuesday for Kane’s milestone moment.
Jordan Homa was watching a Blackhawks game late last month at her home in Houston when she heard the broadcast mention Patrick Kane’s 1,000th career NHL game was coming up.
‘‘My curious mind went to Google and typed in, ‘How many games has Patrick Kane played?’ ’’ she said. ‘‘I did the math to figure out when 1,000 was, and I looked at the calendar.’’
The verdict: March 9 in Dallas — just a four-hour drive away. She texted her dad to get him on board and bought two tickets.
On Tuesday, she made the pilgrimage across eastern Texas to be one of the relatively few Hawks fans to witness Kane’s milestone moment in person.
‘‘This is a moment I’ll get to tell my kids about,’’ she said. ‘‘I think that’s pretty special.’’
Kane’s 1,000th game originally was set to be at home Sunday against the Lightning. The Hawks-Hurricanes postponement Feb. 20, however, bumped the timeline back one game, depriving Kane of the chance to enjoy the milestone in Chicago.
That might have been for the best, though. With no fans yet allowed inside the United Center, Sunday was a strange environment. In fact, Kane said Tuesday he’s waiting to do a full ceremony until fans have returned.
In Dallas, which has allowed some fans into American Airlines Center since the start of the season, at least there was some energy in the building for the occasion. The announced attendance for the 6-1 Hawks loss was 4,211.
‘‘I was thinking that, as well,’’ Kane said after the morning skate Tuesday. ‘‘Chicago fans always seem to travel well to Dallas or any other city. It’s amazing to have the support.’’
Coach Jeremy Colliton concurred.
‘‘It’s not the same [as a full arena], but there’s still a live energy to it,’’ he said. ‘‘A lot of times, the 3,000 or 4,000 people that are there, they take it seriously as far as bringing energy. You like it.’’
The thousand or so Hawks fans — many of whom get to see their favorite team only rarely, much less see big occasions for their favorite team — mixed among the Stars’ supporters in attendance definitely took it seriously.
‘‘I couldn’t believe it,’’ said Matthew Bevers, a lifelong Texas resident-turned-Hawks fan with tickets in Section 306. ‘‘I was talking to my girlfriend about how fortunate [it is] that we’re going to be able to be there. This is an incredible thing to be there for, something I can talk about forever.’’
‘‘We originally had planned to go Thursday night, but we switched to Tuesday,’’ said Section 314 ticket-holder Joey Smith, who watched Kane highlights ‘‘for hours’’ Sunday after realizing what Tuesday would be. ‘‘Everything just [fell] into place perfectly to be his 1,000th career game.’’
Photos courtesy of Jordan HomaJordan Homa and her father enjoyed the Hawks-Stars game from their seventh-row seat.
Hawks games in popular snowbird cities and states — Arizona, Dallas, Florida, Carolina, Nashville — often are filled with contingents of fans clad in red and black.
The COVID restrictions this season temporarily have slowed that turnout, but the huge public interest in Kane’s milestone game Tuesday brought it back. Hours before the game, the cheapest resale tickets on Stubhub were around $55, with lower-bowl tickets more than $100. Those are typical prices in Chicago but atypical in Dallas.
For the many Chicagoans who now live in Texas, however, those prices were worth it.
Caitlin O’Sullivan saw Kane’s championship-sealing goal in Game 6 of the 2015 Stanley Cup Final in person. Having since relocated to Dallas, she cherished this opportunity to see history made again, albeit in slightly less dramatic fashion.
‘‘I’ve grown up watching Patrick Kane on the Hawks,’’ she said. ‘‘Now that I don’t live in Chicago anymore, that homesick nostalgia factor to see something so important to one of my teams, to one of the players so important to that team, is very special.’’
Zach Klein, a former Hawks employee, felt his homesickness disappear altogether.
‘‘I wish I could still be in Chicago, seeing more Blackhawks games,’’ Klein said shortly before heading up to Section 332. ‘‘But I think I’ll make an exception for this one.’’
Other Hawks fans still living in Chicago but obviously unable to see the Hawks at home this season traveled down specifically for the game.
‘‘I decided: ‘Let’s go down. Why not?’ ’’ said Gary Winthrope, who drove 15 hours and stayed overnight in Missouri to make it work. ‘‘The atmosphere is something that everyone has missed, so it’s going to be awesome to be in a stadium that’s cheering for a goal, no matter who it is.’’
And for Will Brault, who moved away from his Chicago-based family for college, the game was a reunion.
‘‘[My brother] booked his flight on Sunday,’’ Brault said. ‘‘I told him: ‘I’ve got two tickets to this game; I’m going regardless.’ And he was like: ‘All right, yeah. I’ll come down.’ ’’
Several fans mentioned Texas’ lack of intense hockey culture as something that made the anticipation for the game even sweeter.
But big events such as this one, even if it did occur in Dallas purely by happenstance, help to change that culture. Bevers, for example, said watching Kane inspired him to start playing hockey just last year.
‘‘Hopefully [Kane] can hear some Hawks fans in the stands,’’ Brault said. ‘‘Because he means a lot to the city of Chicago, and we want to show him that all the way down in Texas.’’
A 15-year-old boy was shot March 10, 2021, in the 9600 block of South Exchange Avenue. | Sun-Times file
About 3 a.m., he was walking home when he noticed a person get out of a dark-colored vehicle in the 9600 block of South Exchange Avenue, and opened fire.
A 15-year-old boy was wounded in a drive-by Wednesday in South Deering on the South Side.
About 3 a.m., he was walking home when he noticed a person get out of a dark-colored vehicle in the 9600 block of South Exchange Avenue, and fired shots. Chicago police said.
The boy was struck in the hip, the left leg, and brought to Come Children’s Hospital for treatment, police said.
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