CHICAGO — A Cicero man with a lengthy prison record was fatally shot months before his namesake son was born.
Hansen Jackson, 29, was shot and killed in the 3700 block of West Chicago Avenue in Humboldt Park, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
He died June 24, and the baby — Hansen Martez Jackson Jr. — was born Sept. 8.
“He was a street boy, but he wasn’t a bad person,” said Jasmin McGee, Jackson’s fiancée and mother of his son. “He loved and cared for everybody. I have two other kids outside of him, and he treated them like they were his own."
Jackson's mother, Betty Ann, said the morning of her son’s death, he was walking with a friend near a gas station on Chicago Avenue when a man came around the corner and started shooting.
The police were nearby, heard the gunshots and arrested the alleged gunman, Anthony Smith, according to court records.
Smith was charged with the murder and pleaded not guilty, according to court records.
Smith had been out on parole after a 2007 conviction for attempted first-degree murder, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Jackson had spent much of his adult life going in and out of prison, mostly on drug offenses. Court records show that he had been arrested or charged 40 times, with his most recent major offense coming in 2010 when he pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance.
His last arrest was in January 2012 on a misdemeanor charge of marijuana possession that was dropped.
Jackson's mother said he wasn’t associated with gangs.
“If he wasn’t with his family, he wasn’t hanging out,” Betty Ann Jackson said. “You don’t get used to this. Every day of my life it hurts."
