ENGLEWOOD — Scottie Cartledge spent his days working on cars and playing video games with his son.
But after Cartledge was shot and killed by a "friend," according to prosecutors, young Jamari Cartledge is left to wonder why his father isn't coming back to play with him.
"My daddy always said he would never leave me," Jamari told his father's girlfriend. "Who did it?'"
Cartledge, 36, of the 6300 block of South Fairfield Avenue, was killed May 29 by fellow Conservative Vice Lord street gang member Jimmie Ollie, prosecutors said. Ollie, 40, of the 1400 block of West 71st Street, had brought a friend to a party who Cartledge believed murdered his brother last year.
Jamari turned 11 the day before his father's funeral. Cartledge has four kids, for whom "it's not the same" said Teresa Jackson, Cartledge's girlfriend of 10 years.
"Sometimes I don't even want to get on the phone with them because we break down together," Jackson said. "They're taking it hard."
Jackson said Cartledge had recently lost his mother, father and brother Phillip, 24, who was shot in September 2011 in Auburn Gresham.
Prosecutors said it was his brother's murder that made him confront Ollie at a party the night he was killed. Prosecutors said Ollie brought the man to the party who Cartledge believed had killed his brother.
The pair argued until Ollie angrily left and walked to a parked car, returning with a gun and shooting Cartledge in his chest, Assistant State's Attorney Bridget O'Brien said at a court hearing Thursday.
Ollie fled the scene after the shooting, but was identified by a witness from the party and picked up on a warrant in north suburban Round Lake.
Cartledge was shot seven times according to court documents.
Jackson, though, denied Cartledge was a gang member or knew Ollie.
"I knew all of his friends and I've never heard of him," Jackson said. "All that Vice Lord stuff was behind him. That was the past."
She said she knew something was wrong that night when she could not reach him on the phone.
"I was calling him and calling him and I wasn't getting an answer," said Jackson, 36.
Jackson had seen him hours before and said he went to pay the phone bill and buy stickers for his car. He had asked her to cook dinner for when he returned, and she had prepared "steak and macaroni."
Cartledge spent his days working on cars around the neighborhood and dreamed of buying his own shop, a trade he learned from his two uncles, Jackson said. Neighbors would always pull up their cars and ask if he could do brakes or an oil change.
"He would charge them $10-$15 because he liked to do it. I would get mad at him."
One year Jackson had gotten into a car accident with his Chevrolet.
"The shop told him it was totaled and that there was no repairing it. He took a sledgehammer and knocked the dents out of it. You could never tell the car had been touched."
Ollie was charged with first-degree murder and ordered held without bond Sunday.
