GRAND CROSSING — Joshua Moore, 21, who was fatally shot in Grand Crossing on his way home from hanging out with friends Saturday night, was a hard worker who had an interest in pursuing a career in broadcast journalism, friends and family said Monday.
Around 10:15 p.m. Saturday, Moore and another 21-year-old man were standing on the sidewalk in the 1100 block of East 73rd Street when a man jumped out of a black sedan nearby and shot at them. Moore was shot multiple times in his chest. The other man was shot in his left leg, according to Officer Jose Estrada, a Chicago Police spokesman.
Both men were taken to Northwestern Hospital, where Moore later died. The other man's condition was not available, Estrada said.
Moore, of the 6400 block of South Ellis Avenue in Woodlawn, died at 11:22 p.m., according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's office.
"My nephew was a good kid. He was not a stereotype," his aunt Belinda Moore told NBC5. "He was a good kid."
As a teen, Moore attended Gary Comer College Prep and Hyde Park Academy, from which he graduated. He currently worked for a towing company and had recently got his own apartment. He was "independent" with a bright future and even mentored at the Gary Comer Youth Center, family and friends said.
Northwestern professor Sarahmaria Gomez said about two years ago, Moore was a "hard-working" member of the Medill Media Teens Program, which pairs undergraduate journalism students with teens at the Gary Comer Youth Center to teach them multimedia journalism skills.
The program forced the students to wake up early and give up their Saturday mornings to learn media skills, which wasn't easy to get high schoolers to buy into. But Moore enjoyed it so much when the program was over he would text Gomez telling her how much he missed it and how he couldn't wait to come back, she said.
"He was a hard worker. He wanted to be with our team of mentors — that shows he was a great kid," Gomez said. "He was a really tall young man, but he was always a sentimental and loving kid. He was always giving hugs, always caring or concerned for other people. He was always asking me what he could do to help."
Moore's sentimentality was on display from his first adventure with the group, when he struggled to grab a few interviews, Gomez said. With some guidance, he began to excel writing broadcast strips and took a serious interest in broadcast journalism, Gomez said.
"At first, he came back so sad because no one would answer his questions," she said. But "he became really good at it. He was always so funny, so funny, just a hard-working, loving person."
Students in the program could pick their own topics for stories, and often choose subjects like prom, high school sports and other high school issues. Moore once created a whole newscast about things you could do for your girlfriend for Valentine's Day. They rarely would choose to report on violence in their neighborhood, she said.
"These students are regular teenagers that just happen to live in a violent neighborhood. They don't want to report on violence in their neighborhood," Gomez said. "Dealing with people who have died [because of gun violence] is a common theme. They're used to it, which makes me very upset."
Gomez said knowing her students deal with the violence so often is infuriating, and she didn't want Moore to be remembered as just another young South Sider dead.
"This is a really horrible situation because I want everyone to know what a great kid he was. He was just a normal teenager with a bright future, who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time," Gomez said.
No one is in custody for the shooting, Estrada said.
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