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A mother from Chicago’s South Side who lost her teenage son to gun violence said crime has worsened in the city since her childhood.
“The boys pulled up right behind our house. They shot him down in the alley. I mean, I was home. His brother was home, we found my son literally on the ground in the alleys taking his last breath,” Marquita Salley told Fox News Digital.
Salley’s son, Gregory Bernard Wilson III, was shot and killed on March 13, 2023, in the Chatham neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. He was 16.
Police opened a homicide investigation into Wilson’s killing, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
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Salley, 41, told Fox News Digital that she is going to court on Sept. 18.
“The person that did this, he is in jail, and we’re not looking for him to get out ever,” Salley’s mother, Gaynelle Simmons, also known as Ms. Gail, added.
Wilson was struck in his left arm, chest and chin on the 400 block of East 88th Street, according to Chicago police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Wilson was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, police said.
Grieving Wilson’s death has been a challenge for the family to overcome.
“When holidays and birthdays and stuff come around, we are together. But the process itself has been rough. Like, he was, a lot of people say they get on TV. ‘Oh, my kid was this good kid. My kid didn’t do this. My kid did do that.’ My kid was a boy. So, of course, he did the boy stuff, as far as fighting and all of that,” Salley said.
“But as far as guns and selling drugs and robbing and stealing and killing, I didn’t have that type of child, and I feel like he got robbed unfortunately of his life by somebody else’s child who, unfortunately, is into those things,” she said.
Growing up on Chicago’s South Side, Salley said crime has worsened since her youth.
“It’s gotten worse from when I grew up until now. When I grew up, I could walk from King Drive to Stony Island without a care in the world. I’m 41 at this time. So in my teenage years… me and my girl cousins, even my boy cousins, all of us together just walking down the street laughing and having a good time,” Salley said.
“Right now, my son could tell me he’s walking to the convenience store around the corner. No, you are not. No, you’re not. It’s that bad. It has changed tremendously,” Salley added.
Over Labor Day weekend, at least 32 shootings took place in Chicago, leaving eight people dead and dozens more wounded, according to police.
Simmons, 61, expressed similar sentiments to Fox News Digital that crime has gotten worse in the city over the years.
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“I know coming up. I’m 61, so in my years coming up we can go outside, you can be home when the streetlights come on. Your parents wasn’t looking for you, you could be gone all day. But when the streetlights came on, no, you’d be at home. Your parents trusted you to make the right decisions back then. You paid them back decisions, you did, you going to get you a little spank-spank when you get home. That’s for sure. That’s back in the day with me,” Simmons said.
President Donald Trump and his administration have launched a crusade against Illinois lawmakers who’ve refused offers to send in National Guard troops to Chicago.
While Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) and other state leaders remain adamant that National Guard troops are not welcome in Chicago, the Trump administration has turned up the heat on Pritzker to accept them.
Chicago, which struggles with poverty and gang violence, has a crime rate above the national average, according to 2023 FBI data.
However, 2023 data shows several Illinois cities—including Chicago Heights, Danville, Peoria, Rockford and Harvey—recorded higher violent crime rates than Chicago.
Simmons wants the National Guard to have a presence in Chicago because communities in the city have “nothing to lose.”
“If Mr. Trump wants to bring these troops to Chicago, hey, bring them on. What have we got to lose? You know what I’m saying? I don’t want them to get out here and shoot our kids or nothing like that, but be a presence… put some fear in them. Let them know that they’re here, and they want to protect the city of Chicago,” Simmons said.
She added, “We got elderly people afraid to ride the red line. You got kids can’t go outside and play. You got women don’t want to walk at night alone. Even in the daytime. It doesn’t matter.”
Simmons started the Gregory B. Wilson III Foundation to give back in honor of Wilson’s memory and have been searching for new sponsors.
“Since this happened, we all came together, and we wanted to do something to give back to the community because Granny Boo, excuse me, Gregory, but he’s known as Granny Boo,” Simmons said.
“We’ve had back-to-school giveaways, which is a complete success. All we do now is we need sponsors to come out and help us,” Simmons said, noting that they are paying out of pocket for many of the materials they give out to kids in need through the foundation.
“We had over 200 to 300 kids and families. We had the characters out there. DJ games, it’s a big event. When his birthday comes, we have a big, big, big celebration. He’ll be 21 in two more years.”
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