CHICAGO — Shannon Walton was gunned down as he returned home from dropping his six-year-old daughter off at school, his longtime girlfriend said.
The 23-year-old walked back home the morning of Jan. 9, and as he approached the gate to the building he and his family lived in, shots were fired, his girlfriend Marcine Brown said.
“I heard gunshots and I came out and he was laying out here,” she said, casting her eyes to the sidewalk in front of her home.
The couple’s four-year-old daughter saw paramedics take her dying father away. He was still breathing but dying in Brown’s arms in the 5700 block of South Sangamon Street, she said.
Walton was pronounced dead at Mt. Sinai Medical Center and his death was ruled a homicide, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.
“She’s just always talking about it,” Brown said of the girl, adding that the daughter often says: “’They shot my daddy and they put him in an ambulance.’”
Walton and Brown, who had been together for about eight years, had five kids together. The oldest is the six-year-old he was taking to school and the youngest was just two months old when Walton was killed. The family planned to move to Tennessee to be with Walton’s grandmother.
“He was a kind guy,” Brown said of Walton.
Walton had been in jail, but returned to Robeson High School after he got out, Brown said. His last conviction was for a 2009 battery, according to court records. He had two other convictions, including one for domestic battery.
Walton liked to play basketball and be with his kids, Brown said.
Brown said her boyfriend was not in a gang, adding that she would have known if he had a beef with anyone in the neighborhood.
“If he got into any trouble he would have let me know,” Brown said.
She said the shooting amounts to bad luck.
“He was a good person,” Brown said. “He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
Meanwhile, people in the neighborhood have moved on.
“Everybody acts like it never happened,” Brown said.
