Tharea Johnson has lost two sons on the block where she has lived for nearly four decades in Fuller Park on the South Side.
The first, Paris Johnson, was 18 years old when he was shot in front of the family’s home and left paralyzed.
He died three years ago, and his younger brother Pierre began spending more and more time away from the block. He had already been staying with a family friend during summer breaks to play sports. It was safer there.
Last week, with just days left in the school year, Pierre was sitting on a porch across the street from his home when he was killed in a shooting that wounded several other people. He was 14.
As gold and blue balloons were released for Pierre this week, Tharea Johnson recounted all the ways she had tried to protect him. But in the end, she “didn’t want him to feel trapped.”
“When your kids can’t come outside or come out to play and you’re stuck in the house every day, all day, due to gun violence, they feel trapped,” Johnson said. “I feel trapped, and I’m a grown woman. I’m scared to come outside.”
‘Wasn’t the life he wanted’
Johnson said Pierre felt more threatened in the neighborhood after his older brother was shot.
Paris was in front of his home in the 4200 block of South Wells Street on the evening of June 27, 2017, when someone shot him, according to police. He was taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition.
Johnson said the shooting left her son paralyzed and in a wheelchair. He died in 2020 when Pierre was 11.
“It really just showed Pierre that wasn’t what he wanted to do,” Johnson said. “Pierre knew that wasn’t the life he wanted. His eyes told a story about how he didn’t really want to be there.”
Pierre had been spending summers with Christine Cozzi, a friend of Johnson, since 2014 after he helped her stepson fix a bike chain. The home became a safe space away from the neighborhood.
“Pierre was always gone,” Johnson said. “He’s at baseball, he’s at Christine’s house, he’s doing things the kids don’t do in the regular neighborhood where he’s from. ... I appreciate [the Martinez family] for being there and showing him that this is what a family looks like when it’s put together.”
Cozzi said the block where Pierre lived “had enough love for him, but it’s got way too much violence for anyone. I hope he realized how loved he was.”
Her favorite memory of Pierre is when he got a hit at a championship baseball game in 2021. Pierre didn’t get many opportunities to bat, but he got a hit off a “fantastic” pitcher to thunderous cheers from both teams.
“I think it’s just a really good indication of how Pierre was really a friend to everybody,” Cozzi said. “There’s something about that kid that he finds a way to make himself a part of everybody’s family.”
The last time she saw Pierre, he told her, “Five more days, Christine, and then I’ll be by you all summer.”
But Pierre would not see the end of the school year.
At least 80 rounds
About 7:30 p.m. on June 1, Pierre texted his mother to ask if he could walk to a gas station. About a half-hour later, Johnson said she got a phone call saying her son was “shot and not moving.”
Pierre had been sitting on a porch across the street when four gunmen parked a white SUV in the alley behind them and snuck through a vacant lot, according to police reports obtained by the Sun-Times.
The group fired at Johnson and others with automatic weapons and fled back to the SUV, police said. About 80 shell casings consisting of 9 mm and rifle rounds were recovered, authorities said.
When officers arrived, a 16-year-old boy fired at them and ran off. He was arrested nearby and was found to have a gunshot wound to the leg.
Pierre was shot in his chest. Also wounded were two men, 18 and 19, and a 21-year-old woman.
Police have said it was not immediately clear whether the gunman had been wounded by police or had already been shot when officers arrived.
Pierre was laid to rest at the McCullough Funeral Home, where his cousin, Atia Wilson, is the director.
“It’s a gift and a curse because it’s an honor to be able to do what I do,” Wilson said. “But at the same time, it’s going to be hard. It puts a lot of pressure on me because he has to be perfect. ... He had a smile that could light up the room.”
Johnson said this latest tragedy has only strengthened her resolve to work with families who try, often in vain, to escape gun violence. She had already been reaching out to victims suffering long-term effects from getting shot to “let them know they were not alone.”
“Today, somebody’s mother is in the same predicament I’m in right now,” Johnson said. “And who’s going to fight for her like me? I feel like I can fight for her because I’m fighting for Pierre.”
“This fight isn’t just for one kid, it’s for everybody’s kids.”
Rosemary Sobol and Sophie Sherry contributed.
