Inside Chicago’s Endless Cycle of Gun Violence
Early in the evening on July 26, 2012, Michael Haynes was cruising around Morgan Park on Chicago’s Far South Side when he and his friends, Harry “Slick” Fullilove and Lester “Doogie” Freeman, got word of a fight about to break out. Haynes — who went by Mikey, though also answered to “Big Bro,” “Lil’ Bro,” and “God Bro,” because so many Morgan Park residents considered him family — was a 22-year-old basketball star five days away from heading to Iona College in New York. Slick owned the burgundy Buick and was letting Mikey drive to take a farewell victory lap of the neighborhood. Mikey turned north up Vincennes Avenue, past neat rows of squat single-family Section-8 homes, and parked near the corner of 116th Street.
Mikey was adored in this tight-knit neighborhood. He was a familiar sight on the courts near his house: six-foot-seven with broad shoulders, wearing crisp white Nikes and colorful warm up gear, shooting jumpers and smoking blunts with friends. His bright smile worked on young women and elders alike. He intended to get a college degree, earn a living playing basketball and raise his family out of poverty. That summer, preparing to head off to Iona, he told his childhood friend Phil Greene, a point guard at St. John’s University in Queens, “I’m not coming back until I get my life in order.”
Mikey parked in front of a house that belonged to Cinque “Q” Lee. On the other side of the street, his friend Dominique Parkman, a rail-thin 22 year old who went by “Don P,” was barking threats at JaJuan Lewis, a well-built running back who played college ball in Florida. A few feet from the Buick, Q, then 20 years old, watched the argument from the curb.
Whereas Mikey, the star athlete, got royal treatment in the neighborhood, Q received abuse. He wore coke-bottle glasses that evoked comparisons to PBS’s book-loving cartoon aardvark, Arthur, and preferred video games to sports. He was teased for looking dirty, for being too poor to buy new sneakers and for being widely regarded as too old to be a virgin. More recently, though, Q had gotten involved in the local drug trade.
Everyone there lived along a dozen or so blocks in Morgan Park dubbed “The Jungle.” Four miles past the final stop of the city’s main subway line, in what is known as the Wild 100s, The Jungle’s main drag on Vincennes is a thoroughfare for drugs and violence. Dealers use the two-way street for open sales through car windows, and slip through the “cuts,” spaces between the houses, to more secluded parts of the neighborhood.
Now, Don P and JaJuan were arguing over a 14-carat gold chain that Don P had lent to JaJuan, and JaJuan had apparently lost. “I really wasn’t supposed to give it up,” Don P says. “He caught me at a nice moment.” Earlier that day, Don P had gone to JaJuan’s house, hit him and tried to throw him over a porch railing. Mikey was there and helped break it up.