One of the last pictures taken of 5-year-old Devin McGregor shows him smiling while holding up a poster that says, “My First Day of Kindergarten.”
He was excited to be at Willard Elementary School in Evanston and wanted to tell his father about it, according to his family. So his mother drove him to Rogers Park for a visit Sunday evening.
His mother had just buckled the boy into his car seat for the trip back home when a black sedan pulled up, and shots were fired. Devin was hit in his head and rushed to Lurie Children’s Hospital, where he died Thursday night.
“Devin has lost his fight,” his family announced on a GoFundMe page. “We are deeply saddened and don’t have the words to express our grief.”
Police suspect Devin’s father was the intended target. He was standing near the car when the shots were fired in the 7600 block of North Paulina Street near the Howard L station. He was hit in his shoulder and hand, according to police.
Police questioned a person of interest this week but released him, according to Chicago Police Supt. David Brown.
“We couldn’t bring across the finish line the person we had,” Brown said at an unrelated news conference Friday. But he added that investigators “have leads, very strong leads.”
Devin’s grandfather, Tervalon Sargent, said his grandson was saying goodbye to his father before his mother was going to drive him home.
“My daughter tried to pull out,” Sargent said outside Lurie Children’s Hospital in the hours after the shooting. “She looked in her rearview mirror, and that’s when she looked back, and she saw my grandson shot, trying to breathe. She took him out of the seat and put him in the seat with her and then drove him to the hospital.
“He didn’t do nothing to nobody,” Sargent said. “Kindergarten. You know how excited these kids [are] to go to kindergarten?”
Ald. Maria Hadden (49th) said the “community is torn up by this.”
“It’s been a very long time since a child has been shot in Rogers Park,” she said. “We’re looking for prayer and help and information.”
The community held an event in support of Devin on Tuesday evening at Good News Community Church. Several of the boy’s relatives were at the church, Hadden said.
“Every shooting is traumatic,” she said. “And a shooting of a child is even more traumatic.”
Contributing: Cindy Hernandez
