Fatal Shooting of Boy, 15, Closes Deadliest May in Chicago in 21 Years

The gray sedan was parked in the ambulance bay of the hospital, its doors open and bullet holes just above and below the driver’s side window.

Minutes earlier, 15-year-old Fabien Lavinder was in the car on 89th Street when someone stepped from an alley near Commercial Avenue and shot him in the chest, Chicago police said. He died shortly before 11 p.m. Tuesday at Advocate Trinity Hospital.

Fabien was the 66th and final homicide victim last month, the deadliest May in Chicago since 1995 when 75 were slain, according to official Police Department records.

For the first five months of this year, 243 people have been killed, the most fatalities since 248 perished in 1999, a Tribune analysis of department statistics found. By the end of 1999, homicides totaled 643 that year.

Shootings have increased as well for the third consecutive year. The department tracks shooting incidents and has reported an increase of more than 50 percent so far this year. Nearly 400 people were shot in May, bringing the total for the first five months to more than 1,500, according to a Tribune analysis.

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The month’s toll was fueled by a Memorial Day weekend in which six people were killed and 63 wounded and a Mother’s Day weekend when more than 50 people were shot, eight fatally.

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Police wrapped yellow crime-scene tape around the sedan after Fabien was taken into the hospital. More than a dozen relatives and friends stood near the emergency entrance. They hugged, cried and smoked cigarettes.

A man in a black T-shirt and jeans walked back and forth on the sidewalk across from the hospital. He held his head in his hands as he sobbed.

“We should have just stayed in the ‘burbs, man,” he said to no one in particular. “We should have just stayed in the ‘burbs. . . . This is bogus.”

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