WEST ENGLEWOOD — Antwone Price worked in the Cook County Clerk's Office for almost a decade, but he also moonlighted as a hip hop promoter.
And family members said he was good at it.
They said Price, 30, represented local rap artists and had promoted shows for big names like T.I., Gucci Mane and Chief Keef.
Price's fiance, Kiara Robinson, said he liked to show off his money. Price drove nice cars and wore nice clothes, but family said that also made him a target in the West Englewood neighborhood.
About 3:20 Wednesday afternoon, police were called to the 7100 block of South Oakley Avenue where they found Price's white, two-door Chevy Camaro. They found 22-year-old Trevin Hullum bound and beaten in the back seat. Price's body was in the trunk, also bound and beaten, family said.
Both men were pronounced dead at the scene. Police have classified both deaths as homicides, according to Officer Daniel O'Brien, a police spokesman, and the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office on Friday morning confirmed the men's identities.
Family members of both murdered men claim Price and Hullum were beaten and held for ransom before they were killed.
Price's grandmother, Myrtis Price, said she believed her grandson was killed over money.
"I knew he was gonna get killed. I had a feeling," Price said at her home Thursday morning. "When we didn't know where he was, I knew somebody had him."
Family members said for all the "flash" and "bling" Price showed, he had recently been strapped for cash, especially after he had bought a home in the South Suburbs for Robinson and the couple's baby daughter.
Robinson said Price had lent $5,000 to a local promoter and T-shirt maker, and he had repeatedly asked for that money back. After dodging Price for some time, the T-shirt maker had called Price late Tuesday night to tell him he could come pick up his money.
Myrtis Price said she was with her grandson Tuesday night before he got the call.
"He left home at 1:30 ... and after that, nobody heard from him," Myrtis Price said.
Trevin Hullum, 22, joined Price to pick up the money. Hullum, who lived in Milwaukee, would come to Chicago to visit family who lived down the street from Price's grandmother. He would also help Price with his promoting work as a way make some cash, according to Hullum's mother, Shante Hullum.
After the two men left Tuesday night to pick the money, Myrtis Price said she received a call from a man trying to disguise his voice.
The man told her he was holding her grandson for a $5,000 ransom.
"I told him I didn't have it," Price said.
On Wednesday, Kiara Robinson said she used OnStar to find Price's car on the 7100 block of South Oakley Avenue. She said she first found Hullum's body in the backseat before discovering Price's body in the trunk.
Shante Hullum said she rushed to Chicago when she heard the news of her son's death. Outside her sister's home Thursday, tears streamed down her face as she described how her son died.
"They took my baby's shoestrings out his shoes and tied him up with his shoestrings, and beat him to death," Hullum said. "And that's it...And I want to know what happened to him, and I want justice."
Hullum said neither her son nor Price were drug dealers or gang members. She said they were both fathers who were just trying to provide for their children.
Hullum, who went by "Tank" because of his heavy-set build, had three daughters. Price had just one daughter, family said.
Robinson broke down crying Thursday as she showed off the diamond ring Price had given her last Christmas when he asked her to marry him.
Myrtis Price described her grandson as a hard-working man who "would work 10 days a week" if he could. She said he studied criminal justice at Quincy University in Quincy, in western Illinois, and had ambitions to one day become a probation officer in Cook County.
She said her grandson wanted to help people and was generous to a fault.
"He was a friendly guy. He loved people," she said. "He lent people money. He tried to help everybody, and people took advantage of him."
Shante Hullum said she wanted the world to know her only son was not a thug or a street person, but a person who had a family that loved him.
"That was my boy," Hullum said. "I want justice."
