ROSELAND — In 1991 Tonya Gist survived being shot in her stomach. Her 15-month-old toddler sitting on her lap did not as the bullet went through the child and entered the mother.
In April, the bullets flew again and this time Gist didn’t make it.
Gist, 41, was shot in the back April 7 in the 300 block of West 108th Place, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office. She was pronounced dead at Roseland Community Hospital and her death was rule a homicide.
“My daughter got killed on the front porch,” her mother, Shirley Gist said, through tears. “… It’s just unbelievable”
Tonya Gist, a mother of two adult children, was at her mother’s home in the Roseland neighborhood and had stepped on to the porch, Shirley Gist said.
“It wasn’t 10 minutes and my baby gone.”
The 70-year-old grandmother, who is legally blind in one eye, heard shots fired and rushed to the door as fast as she could. She found her daughter lying on the porch.
It is still difficult for her to walk on the steps where her daughter died.
“It feels like I’m stepping over her body, because that’s where she was laying,” Shirley Gist said.
In 1991, Gist's son Denzel Gist reportedly died while sitting on her mother's lap at the intersection of 87th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue. A man was convicted of that killing.
