Betty Howard was just going to be a minute. She left the hazard lights of her car flashing as she dashed into a real estate office along a busy stretch of East 79th Street in Chatham to drop off some paperwork at her second job.



As she talked and laughed with co-workers inside late Thursday afternoon, a gang dispute erupted on the street. Bullets tore through a wall, one grazing Louis Hardy, 58, who dived to the floor before noticing Howard lying nearby with a gunshot to the head.



"My mind is racing, I'm trying to decide how best I could help her," Hardy recalled today.



Howard's eyes were wide open, as if she were pleading for help. Hardy said he bent down and told her, "Hold on. Help is on the way."



Howard died minutes later.



Hardy was grazed in the stomach and treated on the scene. A third person, a 23-year-old woman, was shot in the hand as she walked her Shih Tzu dog outside. She took cover at the corner and then realized she had been wounded.



Howard, 58, was among 14 people shot on the south and west sides Thursday, including a man seriously wounded near an elementary school on the West Side as children were being let out.



She was a respected special education teacher at one of Chicago's highest-achieving public schools and the mother of two adult children. Her loss was mourned at Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy and by neighbors, relatives and colleagues.



Howard's brother is a veteran Chicago cop who said the pain he sees every day on the streets was now "hitting home."



"I deal with it all day, every day, because I do work the streets and I'm aware of what's going on in the Chicagoland area. But it just has to stop," Officer Orlando Long said outside Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where Howard was pronounced dead.



"I feel the pain, I know how other people feel now when we just go to the scenes and do what we have to do as a police officer," he said. "But now it's hitting home and it's a terrible situation."



Howard regularly dropped by the real estate office in the 700 block of East 79th to catch up on paperwork or use the copier or fax machine, Hardy said. He had worked in the office since February and knew Howard as someone who was "down to earth" and had a good sense of humor. He could tell she was very committed to children.



Thursday afternoon, Howard was "kind of relaxing and going with the flow. . .She probably wasn't there more than 10 minutes. She was telling us about her students at the school where she taught at, Gwendolyn Brooks."



Hardy said he heard gunfire and hit the floor. He was still bent over Howard when the paramedics arrived. "It was surreal. . .We were right in the middle. A bad movie. A B-movie," Hardy said.



He said his wound was minor and he was treated on the scene. "If you stub your toe, it's worse."



Howard's office is on a busy commercial stretch with several beauty salons and African and Caribbean restaurants.



Monica Tyner runs a daycare business nearby and was standing near South Langley Avenue with Britteny Ibotoye, who had just picked up her 1-year-old daughter up from Tyner's home, when the shooting began.



"I don't want her to get scared and take her baby out of my daycare," said Tyner, 36, who said she's already lost business because parents are concerned about violence in the neighborhood. "They're just spraying bullets. It's broad daylight."



Police have stepped up foot patrols recently near the corner where the shooting happened, said James Brigham, a 63-year-old lifelong Chatham resident. The patrols appear to have had some results, including a drop in crime near a liquor store, said Brigham, a former development manager for the Chicago Housing Authority.



That made Thursday's shooting all the more startling to Brigham.



"I'm just really surprised," said Brigham, who came to take photographs for a newsletter distributed by the Greater Chatham Alliance, a neighborhood group. "We really have gotten a lot of police involvement in this community in the past year."



As of Friday evening, police had made no arrests in the case. Howard's brother had a personal message for the gunman.



"I'm in the 22nd District, Morgan Park area. Beat officer," Long said. "Whomever did this, you hurt my momma a great deal. We just buried two brothers within the last five years. . .It's not easy for her, it's not easy for the family."



A niece said Howard went out of her way to help and guide her young students. "She was just a wonderful person. She taught special ed during the day. She was just a family-oriented person," Kristal Long told reporters. "For something to happen to her, it's unreal."



Brooks' principal D'Andre Weaver released a statement this morning saying Howard's death was "indescribably difficult" for the school.



"Our entire staff, students, and parents are deeply saddened by the unexpected, untimely, and unwarranted loss of our friend, teacher, and colleague," he said. "Dr. Howard has been a member of our family for many years. Her love for all children, but particularly children with diverse learning needs, was second to none.



"This tragedy reiterates the importance of high quality education and the opportunity for social mobility for all children in the City of Chicago," he continued. "As educators, we believe this is the only true way to combat generational poverty, rampant crime, and the sense of helplessness felt by many people in our minority-dominated communities."



News of Howard's violent death shook up her former South Side neighborhood, where she was well known on the block. Howard moved from her Auburn Gresham home a decade ago, her neighbors said, but she hired men on the block to take care of her property and rented her house to an elderly couple that needed a place to stay.



"She was always a really helpful and considerate person," said Odell Spencer, 62, Howard's tenant, who cares for his parents in the woman's former home. "She was fun and lovely. She was organized and involved in her church. We are so shocked that something like this could happen to her."



Spencer said he, his parents and neighbors were struggling to digest the news.



"She didn't deserve to die like this," he said. "There is so much violence and I feel so helpless and it's innocent people getting killed all the time. Everybody knows Betty on this block as a really cheerful, thoughtful person. She will be missed."



The news hit Tommie King hard, too. He had known Howard for 30 years, he said, and remembered her raising her two sons on the block they shared.



"Betty was very nice and didn't bother nobody," said King, 56. "It breaks my heart to hear something like this has happened to such a nice person. To see her go out like this? It really hurts. I'm shocked."