Two teenagers were shot, one of them fatally, in Gage Park on the Southwest Side on Sunday night, and now their parents, who are Venezuelan migrants, are searching for answers.
Just before 9 p.m., Cesar Brazon Chacon, 17, and a 14-year-old girl were walking in the 5600 block of South Maplewood Avenue when two people dressed in all black emerged from a gangway, according to a Chicago police report and the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
The two people opened fire on the teens with a rifle and a handgun, striking Cesar multiple times and grazing the 14-year-old girl, police said.
Cesar was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, authorities said. The girl suffered graze wounds to her leg and head. She was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital in good condition.
No arrests have been made in the shooting, police said.
Marianne Brazon, Cesar’s mother, said she doesn’t know why anyone would target her son. She’s trying to piece together what happened that night by talking with neighbors and friends.
She said she hopes police can arrest the assailants so she can get answers, because police so far haven’t been forthcoming.
“They haven’t given me any information. Nobody is saying anything, only that they are investigating and investigating,” she said. “Who knows if it’ll end up like a lot of deaths that have happened here. Nobody knows anything.”
She said her son was a good role model to his four younger siblings, and he didn’t have enemies. She said he liked to play basketball.
Brazon said her family was among the first migrants seeking asylum to be brought to the city by bus in 2022. Authorities in Texas put her on a bus to the city after she entered the United States at the Juarez border crossing.
“Life here has been tough, and now they killed your son and you don’t know why,” Brazon said.
The father of the 14-year-old girl has many of the same questions as Cesar’s mother. His daughter, who was discharged from the hospital Monday morning, is having trouble recounting the incident.
“She said everything happened so fast that she doesn’t remember,” said the man, who asked not to be named for safety concerns.
Cesar and the girl knew each other from Gage Park High School and had recently started becoming friends, the man said. Cesar was walking her home when the shooting occurred, he said.
The man said his daughter was doing well physically since being released from the hospital. The two have been in Chicago for about six months after entering the country through Texas. They were then given a plane ticket to Chicago.
“I never thought something like this would happen in this country,” the man said.