Very sad. There seems to be a looming target over the Sims family home on the South Side. In 1998, Stephen Sims, 20, lost his mother to gun violence in Roseland. In 2013, he lost his 5-year-old brother, Sterling, and his stepmother to an armed robbery after the family refused to hand over their belongings. A few months later, Sims was pushed out of the back doors of a bus and jumped by five men who broke his jaw. And on Thursday, as Sims was in his vehicle preparing to begin his shift at the Bedford Park Wal-Mart, he was approached by several men and shot to death, according to police and his family. You know that feeling you get when youre nervous and paranoid? said Sims father, Steven Sims, who has now lost two sons to gun violence. He sat at the kitchen table Saturday with family in the 5400 block of South Damen Avenue and drank cognac out of a plastic cup near a tall fruit basket with a pink bow. Anxiety, thats it. Thats what I feel living out here. Sims was pronounced dead at 5:06 p.m. Thursday at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, according to the Cook County medical examiner. The Bedford Park Police Department is investigating the case. The family said Sims was a sophomore at Malcolm X College and was studying to be a police officer. He was on Christmas break and working at the Wal-Mart to save money. The family believes the suspects must have followed Sims from his home in the Back of the Yards neighborhood to southwest suburban Bedford Park, where they attacked him and fled. Police said they found Sims in the front seat of a vehicle, unresponsive. On Saturday, the family gathered at the home owned by Sims grandmother, Doris Sims. There, they swapped memories of Stephen and Sterling, two boys who Doris Sims said were just so happy. I raised Stephen since he was 3 years old. I was like his mother, Doris Sims said. She took him in after his mother, Catherine Reeves, was killed. Doris Sims heard the news that her second grandson had been shot Thursday from a neighbor, who knocked on her door, took Doris hands in hers, and told her that her grandson was found dead in a parking lot. I started screaming, Doris Sims said. Just screaming. Sims father thinks the biggest takeaway from the shooting is awareness of gun violence, particularly in their neighborhood. He was red-eyed Saturday and asserted that a solution needs to be found. Enough is enough, Steven Sims said. We cant accept this anymore. A female relative who would not give her name said she tries to be courageous, but the reality of losing her two cousins within two years haunts her. Im scared, she said quietly. I want to grow old. Copyright © 2015, Chicago Tribune
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 03:03:02 +0000
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