Eleven years earlier, Harrington’s mother had been killed when she mistakenly walked into a house that was being robbed. “That was a rough patch,” he recalled. “I donated mom’s organs, which helped three people. God was preparing me for this.”

By “this,” Harrington was referring to his own shooting. One of his daily rituals was driving his daughter, Naja, to high school. Early one morning in late January in 2014, with Harrington’s car in a repair shop, they set out together in a rented white sedan. At the corner of Augusta Boulevard and Hamlin Avenue, in the West Side neighborhood of Humboldt Park, a shooting had just taken place involving a white sedan. When Harrington and Naja drove into that same intersection, the men who had been shooting at the other white sedan opened fire, thinking it was the same car.

Harrington lay on top of his daughter, trying to protect her. “Daddy, I don’t want to die,” she cried. By the time the shooting stopped, she was unharmed, but he had been hit twice; one bullet went through his back and damaged two vertebrae, causing him to lose the use of his legs. He has used a wheelchair ever since.

Image A poster for “Hoop Dreams,” which followed two promising young basketball players.

The Grim Roll of Victims

The person who brought Shawn Harrington to my attention was an assistant professor at New Mexico State, Rus Bradburd. A former college basketball assistant coach, Bradburd had recruited Harrington to New Mexico State from a junior college. Harrington left the school after one year, and the two men had lost touch. But when he heard about the shooting, Bradburd visited Harrington and has since been a constant in his life, helping him in innumerable ways. (Bradburd is also writing a book about Harrington, which is to be published in 2018 and is tentatively titled, “All the Dreams We’ve Dreamed.”)

In the course of our conversations, Bradburd made me aware that Harrington was not the only former Marshall High basketball player to have been shot in recent years. Most of them had been coached by Harrington. Tim Triplett, star of the 2014 Marshall team, was killed in April 2015 — just a few years after his brother had been killed. Martin Satterfield, shot six times in the spring of 2014, is now paralyzed. Shawn Holloway was killed in early 2015. Marcus Patrick and Keon Boyd were killed this year. And two months ago, Edward and Edwin Bryant, 17-year-old twins who were sophomores at Marshall, met the same fate. Edward, a talented 6-foot-5 forward, was becoming a star of the basketball team, and Edwin played football for Marshall.

“The violence has always been there,” Harrington told me. “When I was in high school, it was bad. But back then, gang members protected the athletes. They’d say: ‘Get out of here. Go back to school.’”