Those next five months were hard. He had trouble waking up in the mornings. He didn’t seem to care as much in class. His grades slipped and he became ineligible to play on the varsity basketball team at Urban Prep–Englewood High School. He stopped attending games because he couldn’t bear to watch. This was his senior year and he had hoped to earn a walk-on spot on a college team. But while he couldn’t play basketball for his school, he could still play on the blacktops at Trumbull Park, just down the street from the housing projects on 105th Street where his family lived.

One afternoon in early March, about a week before his 18th birthday, Deonte called his friend Chester Palmer and told him he was just leaving school and asked if he wanted to meet up and hoop in a little bit. Chester, who was 23 at the time, lived next door to Deonte. It was about an hour and a half by bus from Urban Prep’s campus in the Englewood neighborhood to their South Deering neighborhood on the far South Side, and he arrived sometime after 6. He changed out of his school uniform and into some camo pants and a green jacket and then knocked on Chester’s door. We gotta go to the store first, Chester told him. He had to get milk for his baby.

They crossed the courtyard, past the four-story brown-brick buildings of the Trumbull Park Homes and past the empty playground. Railroad tracks lay on both sides of the projects, which sat on the edge of a neighborhood tucked deep into Chicago’s southeast corner, boxed in by three highways, a stretch of marshland, and the Calumet River. Refineries and smokestacks dotted the surroundings. The neighborhood was quiet. It was a place that felt isolated. It was a place where feuds could simmer and boil. “The Wild Hundreds,” some locals called this part of the city. For Deonte and Chester, keeping a close eye on their surroundings was second nature.

The streets were empty except for a black SUV parked in the fire lane down the block. Old, dirty snow coated the ground. Deonte and Chester scurried down the steps and turned onto the sidewalk toward the corner store a block away. The SUV slowly rolled forward in their direction, bumping over the deep potholes that lined the one-way street like a minefield. A dark-colored vehicle, idling in a no-parking zone in the projects, slowly approaching two young black males minding their own business — Deonte and Chester quickly reached the same conclusion. Yo, it’s the police, Deonte said. You dirty?

Chester checked his pockets. He had left his weed at home. Nah, I’m good, he said.

The SUV pulled up beside them. Deonte stopped walking. If the police were going to hassle them, they might as well get it over with. The two eyed the vehicle. “The back driver-side window came down,” Chester said. “They don’t say nothing. A dude’s arm came out the window and he had a gun and he just started shooting.”

They ran. Chester slipped in the snow and fell to the ground. He heard Deonte shout in pain, but Deonte kept running toward the front of their apartment building. Chester hopped up and took off in the opposite direction, around the back of the complex. He felt a sharp pain on the top of his head, from the bullet that grazed him and knocked off his beanie. He rushed into his building and banged on Ebonie’s front door. When she opened it, she saw that Chester’s face was covered in blood.

Deonte lay dead a few yards from his building, his blood soaking into the pavement. His older brother Daquon was kneeling beside him when Ebonie got there. A crowd gathered. Daquon told his mother he had tried to carry his brother home but couldn’t go any farther. He told her he was sorry.