ASHBURN — Davonta Burdine knew something was wrong when he answered the front door Thursday morning and a neighbor said someone had been shot in an alley — and then began describing the clothing his brother had been wearing that day.
But he was still shocked to find his sibling laying in a pool of blood a block away a short time later.
"I ran, ran, ran ... ," Burdine said Thursday afternoon, his voice trailing off as he stared at the route he took from his grandmother's house to his brother's side.
"I wasn't for sure if it was him, but as I ran and got closer and closer I knew. I saw his shoes, I saw his legs and I knew it was him," Davonta said. "My heart was beating really fast. It still is. I'm in the clouds. This is a dream and you don't want to believe it."
Thirty minutes earlier, Joseph Burdine, 24, had asked his aunt for $5 to buy a pack of cigarettes from the grocery store down the street, where he planned to stop on his way to catch the bus on Kedzie Avenue on his way to work at Ultra Foods.
But at 11:10 a.m., Joseph Burdine was shot multiple times in the 7900 block of South Kedzie Avenue. He was pronounced dead at the scene, said Officer Michael Sullivan, a Chicago police spokesman.
Burdine, of the 8000 block of South Troy Street, was pronounced dead at 11:20 a.m., according to the Cook County Medical Examiner.
Neighbors said they saw two young men chase Burdine toward a dead end in an alley before they heard gun shots and saw a grey SUV come pick up the men as they fled.
He was the third person to be fatally shot Thursday.
Family said he had just received a promotion after working there for about six months at Ultra Foods. Thursday was payday, they said.
When Davonta found him, his body was a few feet from his book bag and a bottle of orange juice, which lay strewn along a curb, he said.
"I just saw him 10 minutes before," Davonta recalled, picking at the label on the glass bottle of Mr. Pure orange juice that he recovered from the scene.
Burdine was the father of a 5-year-old boy and 7- and 2-year-old daughters.
He was a loving and selfless provider for his three kids and the kind of man "who would give you his last anything," said his girlfriend, who declined to give her name.
She was on the phone with him while the whole ordeal played out, she said. She heard her boyfriend running, but never heard the gunshots, then heard silence followed by police sirens.
"We weren't talking much because he was walking. I heard someone calling his name and the phone was still going. I heard police and I thought he was going to jail," she said fighting through tears as she clutched a grey hoody over her face.
As she listened to police radios and their low chatter, she texted his cousin, who told her he had been shot.
"I kept saying, 'Hello?' because I wasn't hearing anything," she said. "I didn't even know he was dead and I was on the phone with him."
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:
