Shot and Killed for a Bike

Chicago Student, 14-Years-Old, Gunned Down For His Bike

In yet another tragic shooting in Chicago, 14-year-old Ulysses Simmons was killed while enjoying a summer day. He was gunned down by two other teens who wanted his bike.

According to the Sun-Times cover story on June 18th:

Ulysses Simmons is first CPS student killed over summer break

It was the first day of summer vacation -- cool, not too hot -- a perfect day to hang out with buddies on the block and flirt with the girls.

That's what 14-year-old Ulysses Simmons was doing Monday, friends said, when a white car circled the South Side block for the third time, disappearing around the corner.

Minutes later, two of three teens who had been riding in the suspicious car ran up through the alley near 92nd and Langley and opened fire on the group of about 10 youths.

As they scattered, one 14-year-old boy was shot in the shoulder. Friends said Ulysses, who had been sitting on his beloved bike talking to one of the girls, fell to the ground, clutching his stomach.

The Burnside boy, an eighth-grader at Beasley Academic Center, was mechanically inclined -- he could fix almost anything around the house and on the car, even radios and computers, his grandmother said. He is the first Chicago Public Schools student slain over the summer break.

And it was all because of a bike.

"All I could do was pray in silence when I heard that," Sharon Wright, his grandmother who raised him, said Tuesday as she mechanically prepared to bury a child.

"My Ulysses was a sweet, outgoing and kind-hearted son. He always did whatever I asked him, without any argument," she said, still numb. "He was full of love, a good spirit, just one of a kind."

Ulysses, the youngest of five siblings, loved music and spent hours on his computer composing raps and funky beats. He'd just gotten his first job -- working with young children this summer at a local church, his grandmother said.

"When will this killing stop?" she asked. "It needs to stop."

Her grandson was the 27th CPS student slain since last fall.

He was pronounced dead of a gunshot wound to the abdomen at 1 a.m. Tuesday at the University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital. The other boy was in stable condition Monday at Comer.

Also worrisome is that several students were scared about talking to the police.

But just because the youth saw the shooters doesn't mean police can pick them up, one detective said Tuesday, as he and other officers kept steady vigil on the block.

"We know who did it. But these kids have to live here. Getting them to agree to identify the shooters is another matter," the detective said. "That boy died over a bike."

How is it that teens in Chicago, and across the country, can obtain a firearm so easily?

Could it be that lax gun laws in Illinois and across the nation allow gun traffickers to flood our communities with weapons? Yes, that is indeed the problem.

The solution then is to cut off the source of illegal guns being trafficked into mostly urban areas. That means that policies such as requiring background checks on all gun purchases, limiting handgun purchases to one per month, and requiring gun owners to report to law enforcement officials any lost or stolen guns must be implemented.

Such common sense measures don't take away anyone's "right" to own a gun, and instead keep firearms from falling into the wrong hands, such as teens and gang members, who continue to use illegal guns to kill with reckless abandon.