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'It's Just Gotten Ridiculous': Father of Four Killed While Walking Home

By Quinn Ford | August 23, 2014 12:02pm
 Michael Clark, 52, was fatally shot Thursday night in a drive-by shooting. Clark, a father of four, was walking home and had stopped a memorial party in West Englewood, family said.
Michael Clark
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WEST ENGLEWOOD — Michael Clark left his uncle's home in West Engelwood Thursday night feeling good.

Clark, or "MC" as his family and friends called him, had watched Jackie Robinson West's latest win in the Little League World Series before leaving at 10:30 p.m. to take the short walk back to his home in the 7300 block of South Paulina Street.

But the 52-year-old never made it; he was slain in a drive-by shooting.

Clark ran into a street party on his uncle's block on his walk back, family said. It was a party honoring the birthday of Frank Hart, a 16-year-old boy from the neighborhood who was killed in 2010.

About 50 people were on the block, and Clark paused to say hello to some neighbors, said Roderick Monroe, Clark's brother-in-law.

That's when a gunman inside a passing gray sedan opened fire on the crowd, shooting Clark twice in his back and shoulder and a 22-year-old man in his foot. Monroe said he heard the shots ring out from his uncle's house.

"I ran down there, and I saw him on the ground ... eyes rolling in the back of his head," Monroe said of Clark.

Monroe said the crowd gathered around Clark as the 52-year-old repeated, "'I'm hit. I'm hit. I'm hit.'"

"They were saying, 'You gonna be alright MC, you gonna be alright. Just be calm. Stay calm, MC," Monroe said.

But Clark lost consciousness. An ambulance rushed him to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he died before reaching surgery, authorities and Clark's daughter said.

The 22-year-old was taken to Holy Cross Hospital and has since been released.

Friday afternoon, teary-eyed family members sat at Clark's home on South Paulina Street, the same house where he was born and raised, family said.

Clark, a father of four children and grandfather of seven, lived in Englewood his entire life. He attended Harper High School and currently worked for a company cleaning industrial machinery, family members said.

His youngest daughter, Chanice Clark, said her father liked to play cards. He was a good bowler too, but mostly, he just liked spending time with his family, she said.

"He liked to be around all his kids. He called us everyday," she said. "That's all he was about, family."

Monroe said the steady violence in West Englewood makes him weary to go anywhere, even the store.

"[Clark] was a working man, and that's what gets me," Monroe said. "They killed somebody that works and has a family. He wasn't with this stuff that's going on around here. ... He didn't deserve to get killed."

Family and friends said they did not know what specifically led to the shooting but blamed a long-burning dispute between different gang factions in the neighborhood.

Since mid-July, there have been at least ten people shot in the area, roughly bounded by 71st and 74th streets and Damen and Racine avenues. Four of those shootings have been fatal, including Michael Clark and the shooting death of a 16-year-old girl on August 16.

"These boys out here, they don't have no remorse. They don't have no feelings," Monroe said.

Tracy Shield, who grew up across the street from Clark's family, said Friday she has seen her block get increasingly violent.

"It's just gotten ridiculous," she said.

And Shield said she wants the rest of Chicago to pay more attention to what is happening in her neighborhood and to each and every shooting.

"We don't get it in Englewood. That's how we feel," she said. "We don't get the attention that everybody else gets, and it's unfair."

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