EXCLUSIVE: Now deliver on your promise to beat the gun gangs, families of Chicago's dead tell Kanye after his meeting with Trump - as four more die in robbery on drug house

  • Kanye West met the president-elect at Trump Tower last week and said he wanted to open a dialog about the mounting death toll in Chicago 
  • Families who have lost their relatives to gun violence tell DailyMail.com it's time for both men to deliver 
  • One father whose teenage son was gunned down as he left church says: 'I welcome any conversation this is going to lead to something to stem this.' 
  • Death toll in Chicago this year is 725 and counting, with four people shot in a house on Saturday morning and another man gunned down in latest murders 

It was a meeting as unexpected as it was dramatic: Kanye West, the high-profile rapper turning up at Trump Tower and being embraced by the president-elect.

Now the people of Chicago want Kanye to deliver on his promise of 'change' after he said that the issues he talked with Donald Trump about included violence in the city.

The scale of gun violence in the city grew in recent days: on Saturday morning four more people died in a shooting at a house in the Fernwood area.

So many other people were shot and wounded throughout the city that the Chicago Tribune simply listed 'other shootings'.

Police believe the latest atrocity was apparently a robbery and removed what they believe were illegal drugs from the house where the four were murdered. 

For those who have spent years in the shadow of the violence, the meeting between Kanye and Trump is the latest time that the problem has been on the national stage - with apparently little success before. 

Summit: The meeting between Donald Trump and Kanye West was unexpected and the rapper later said it was to discuss 'multicultural issues' including violence in Chicago

Latest scene of devastation: Four people were murdered at this house in the Fernwood area of the city on Saturday. Another was critically injured. Police removed what they said appeared to be illegal narcotics from the home

Bereaved: Tom Bosley, whose son was killed as he walked out of church and into a gang shooting said any conversation which helped end the violence was to be welcomed

Victim: Terrell Bosley was hoping to be a professional musician; he was just 16 when a bullet intended for a gangster hit him. After his death his father had to defend his character

Tom Bosley has tears welling in his eyes as he remembers his son Terrell and the random bullet which took his life.

Bosley, 51, thought the teenager, who was part of a gospel choir in a tough neighborhood, would be safe in church.He was wrong.

It was ten years ago when died from a single stray .45 shot that was meant for a gangster killed his 18-year-old son.

Terrell was killed as he walked through a church parking lot with his guitar in his hands.

The killer has never been found and since then thousands of lives have been claimed in the areas of Chicago which one priest, whose own foster son was shot dead, described as 'a war zone'.

Bosley says his son's unsolved murder is a typically tragic tale of life and death among Chicago's rougher suburbs and the murder rate has gone - people caught up in the violence feel - largely ignored by the country's political administration.

Bosley, a former banker, who gave up his job to help other families who had suffered, has welcomed the intervention by Chicago rapper Kanye West and the President elect who discussed the dire situation in his home town.

'I welcome their conversation,' he said. 

'It's good that people like them see what's going on here and want to do something. It has just gotten worse.

'I welcome any conversation that is going to lead to something to stem this gun violence.

'Those who haven't been affected by gun violence, have to take it as seriously as those who have been affected.'

Bosley's son's murder in April 2006 prompted him to become involved in trying to fix the problem. 

Terrell was hit in the shoulder and spine by a stray bullet as he was leaving choir practice with his bass guitar. He has just spoken with his mother Pam, telling her he would be home soon to join his parents and two brothers for dinner. It was just 6pm.

'He was putting his instruments in a car when some guys drove,' his father said.

'They were shooting at someone and when they shot at that person, a bullet hit my son as he was coming out of church.

VICTIMS THIS MONTH - SO FAR...

The oldest was 73, the youngest 16. These are 16 of the December victims of Chicago's gun violence epidemic - and the top if an iceberg in this year's death toll.  

Another shooting: A 21-year-old man was seriously wounded on Saturday in a shooting outside a funeral home on the West Side of Chicago; two people were arrested

Victims: Corey Martin, 17, shot and killed at 8.41am; Lavaris Johnson, 30, shot to death hours after he was shot and wounded just a mile away; Joel Planas, 34, shot in the abdomen in a fight; Carl Jones, 19, killed on the block where he lived.

Victims: Curtis Nowells, 33, killed from behind by a masked man; Elijah Jackson, 36, killed with his sister in a house where drugs had been dealt; Elijah Jones, 17, killed just after midday; Christopher Brandon-Lucket, 16, the youngest victim of the month.

Victims: Shacora Jackson, 41, one of four shot in a drug-dealing house at the weekend; Nathaniel Lewis-Edwards, 31, shot dead while driving; Sylvester Rainge, 52, gunned down a block from home; Anthony Barr, 45, shot and killed sitting in an SUV

Victims: Ed Brown, 25, a professional boxer shot while sitting in his car ; Antron Young, 23, shot inside a fast-food restaurant; Lawrence Matchem, 49, killed by multiple gunshots, including to the head; Ron Allen, 73, killed when a bullet struck him as he drove, the oldest victim of December 2016

'That devastated my wife, myself and my other two sons because one place we always thought our kids would be was at church.

'We had just talked to him a few minutes earlier and he was saying "we are wrapping up practice and I'll be home soon and see you guys".

'My wife got this call and the girl on the phone said Tyrell had got shot. My wife said "Tyrell is at church…how can he get shot?" 'It happened in the church parking lot.'

FOUR MORE DEAD IN 'ROBBERY' 

The latest multiple murder in Chicago saw four people murdered in Fernwood on Saturday.

It appears to be another drug-related crime. 

'The investigation has revealed people in the home were selling potential narcotics out that home earlier in the day,' Chicago Police Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

'And we believe individuals returned to rob occupants in that home.'

Police and the Cook County medical examiner said the victims found Saturday included two women ages 19 and 41 and two men ages 36 and 45. 

An 18-year-old woman was hospitalized in critical condition and a 2-year-old child wasn't hurt, officials said.

According to autopsies, three of the victims were shot in the head and the fourth suffered multiple gunshot wounds. 

Drugs were found in the home.  

Police have not released the names of the victims but WGN TV reported that two of the four were brother and sister Elijah and Shacora Jacskon. 

 

The couple got to the church as paramedics worked on their son and following them to the ER.

'At the hospital they put us in a room and it seemed like forever that the doctors were working on him and then they came out about an hour later and they were talking in the past tense,' he said.

'They were like "You know we did everything we could and we did this and that".

'Everybody who was waiting in that room just lost it and my other two younger sons who were in another room.

'I had to come out and tell them that their brother wasn't coming home. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.'

Almost inevitably, the murder raised questions over whether Tyrell was in a gang, but like many of Chicago's gin victims, he was an innocent caught in the crossfire.

'My son's character was being questioned and that upset me. This kid wasn't involved in any other activities apart from working part time, playing his music and going to school.'

Father-and-son had made a 'deal' that if Bosley paid for the bass guitars, Terrell would go to school and study hard in case his dream of being a professional musician could not be realized.

Instead, his father made a new 'deal' as he stood over his son's body in the morgue: 'I said I was going to do my best to help young men change their lives and not destroy other peoples' lives like ours and how his life was taken.'

Since his son's senseless murder, he had got used to weekly meetings with other grief-stricken parents coming to terms with the loss of a child through gun violence.

Political intervention: Tre Bosley went on a CNN summit on gun crime with the president and challenged him on the issue

No answer: 'The president told him to continue to stay on the on the path that he was on and to get good grades, but he couldn't address the shootings here in Chicago,' Bosley said of his son's meeting with the president

'Ten years ago I was unaffected. My son was still living and I was going about my business.

'Then it hit me… and it has hit so many other families since. It has gotten worse. I have encountered so many families who have lost their kids through senseless gun violence.

'You hear about the mass shootings like Sandy Hook and other communities, but when it happens in an urban highly African American or Hispanic community, it is like it has been de-sensitized . It is like 'Ok, it happens there so that is their problem.'

He said stray bullets were as much a problem in the south side of Chicago as those fired by killers at their intended targets.

'We have come to find out in so many cases, innocent young ladies and guys getting caught in the cross fire'.

The long list of innocent victims includes school children and babies in prams who have been hit in the cross fire. One 11-year-old child was struck through a window and killed as she played at a friend's house in a slumber party.

'The people out here who are shooting don't care if they hit an innocent victim as long as they get the guy they are after. They don't care who is around' he said.

'But every time a kid gets shot, I flash back to the night of my son's murder.'

The parents now work with Father Michael Pfleger of Saint Sabina church on the South Side. 

Victim too: Fr Michael Pfleger lost a young man he fostered to gun violence and is now outspoken on the issue

The Catholic priest's own foster son was also murdered in 1998. He and Fr Pflegr now mentor young men, mainly African American, against guns and violence in a program they call 'strong futures'.

Fifty men, many of who are gang affiliated, receive guidance and help in finding work and more than twenty are in employment, and another six in internships with local businesses.

'When I was having that conversation with Tyrell, I didn't know how it was going to happen or how I was going to help. But we are determined to help change the mindset of young men in Chicago.'

There is a political side to it too and Kanye's meeting with Trump is not the first time Bosley has seen interventions by national figures.

Terrell's youngest brother Tervon went to Fairfax, Virginia, to meet President Obama at a CNN 'summit' on gun violence, but no answers were forthcoming.

'His question to the President was "as a young person how do I navigate my life through Chicago to reach my destiny and become an engineer?".

'The president told him to continue to stay on the on the path that he was on and to get good grades, but he couldn't address the shootings here in Chicago.'

'He said "it is going to take the community, police, policy changes and a lot to change this problem".

'I grew up in a society where people were not getting shot like this. This is not normal it has become the norm but there are other parts of the country where it doesn't happen.'

For his part Fr Pfleger is less positive about the Trump-West intervention.

Fr Pfleger has become an outspoken critic of gun culture and has been given police protection from gangs as a result, said he was 'very unimpressed' by Kanye's meeting with Trump, but would have preferred if the rapper had stood at a microphone and talked about 'jobs, schools and economic development'.

He sees the problems of gun violence as having economic roots with Chicago's less affluent areas suffering double-digit unemployment and educational 

Lost: Kelly Perez's husband Anthony Perez was shot and killed in the street in 2005, only four months after their wedding. The murder was never solved

Backing: Perez said: 'Donald Trump knows what is going on. He needs to speak to the community here and help them.'

He added: 'When is the last time Kanye or Donald Trump have been on the streets of Chicago? What do they really know about the violence? Who have they sat down with and understood and got a grasp of it?

'I don't need high profile people to address it in the abstract. I need high profile people to want to do something concretely about it to change it.

'Where was Kanye for the last year when our numbers were going through the roof? We have more murders than Los Angeles and New York combined.'

He added: 'Anybody can get a gun anywhere at any time and Chicago has the highest number of 18- to 26-year-old African Americans of any city in the country who are neither employed or in school.

'You put all these scenarios together and it is no surprise that we have this violence.'

His hostile reaction was not shared by Kelly Perez, whose husband Anthony Henson was murdered four months after their wedding. 

She said the Kanye-Trump focus on homicides in Chicago was a positive development.

Perez, 33, said Kanye could provide leadership in helping young men in the city to learn that guns were not the way forward and that the rising murder rate had to be stemmed.

She added: 'Kanye is from Chicago and he should come to the city and maybe give some of his time and his money to help people who have lose their breadwinners.

'Here, grandmothers are bringing up babies because their mothers and fathers have been killed. Kanye could show some leadership and give some financial help to the families.

'There have been 730 homicides in Chicago this year and that means there are a lot of people suffering.'

Her husband was a 26-year-old African-American who was gunned down in the street in 2005 and the murder has never been solved.

Since then Perez, who was 21 at the time and has since re-married and had two children, has been working with people like her who have been left bereaved similarly.

She said President-elect Trump's intervention should lead to schemes to set up better educational and housing programs for those left behind after losing family members to violence.

'He needs to look at minimizing the easy access to guns around Chicago with new laws. The Chicago police do a good job but with 730 murders, it is difficult for them.

'There needs to be more support for them and new safety plans. Donald Trump knows what is going on. He needs to speak to the community here and help them.' 

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