

Another neighbor, Clayshia Moore, walked up and down the block barefoot before the sun began to rise. She had lathered her feet and hands with blessed oil while her aunt, Sondra Patterson, poured more of the oil down the street.



Patterson hoped the oil would protect her neighbors. "That God will cover us," she said. "That he will help protect us."



Moore was in bed when she heard five to six gunshots just before 5 a.m. She thought the noise could have been coming from the trash cans in the alley. She didn't know there had been a shooting until she saw officers and paramedics just a few houses from where she lives.



Chicago police did not release details about what led to the shooting, leaving neighbors to speculate.



"That's kind of odd coming from that house," said one neighbor who did not want to be identified. "They quiet, they real quiet."



The same neighbor said residents at a recent block club meeting had discussed installing cameras on the block in response to an uptick in home burglaries.



"Yeah, the area is going down, that's for sure," she said.



Most of the homes on the block are owned by their original owners, Patterson said. She has lived in her home since the 1970s. It's only been in the past five years that she's noticed crime in her neighborhood.



"We've never seen this before," she said.



Myles joined the court in October 1999 when the Illinois Supreme Court appointed him to fill a vacancy. Circuit judges then appointed him as an associate judge in June 2001, and he has served in the criminal division since March 2009.



The two suspects in the infamous murder of seven people at a Brown's Chicken in Palatine appeared before Myles shortly after their 2002 arrests. Myles was the judge who ordered William Balfour to be held without bond in the 2008 killings of three relatives of singer Jennifer Hudson.



Just before 9 a.m. Monday, a handful of young men stood outside Myles's locked courtroom, Room 204, at 26th Street and California Avenue, waiting to attend his scheduled morning call.



A woman emerged.



"Judge Myles?" she asked quietly, then directed the men to a courtroom down the hall.



The death of the judge stunned colleagues – and even one defendant – at the county's main criminal courthouse where Myles had worked for years.



The defendant was slated to appear before Myles on Monday and began to cry on hearing the news of his death, according to his courtroom staff.



LeRoy K. Martin Jr., presiding judge of the Criminal Division, headquartered at the Leighton Criminal Court building, last saw Myles on Friday when he brought his teenage daughter to spend the day with him at the courthouse.



"Everyone here is devastated," Martin said. "People know when a judge is fair."



Martin said it was unclear if Myles' work as a judge played any factor in his killing.