CHICAGO (WLS) — An 18-year-old with a promised future, Khalil White-El had just gotten a job. In fact, his father said he planned on soon moving his son out of Chicago to help run his restaurant in Arizona. Those plans, tragically, never came to fruition.
“These plans that we had for him wasn’t the plans that God had for him,” Rodney White-El said. “These plans that we had for him wasn’t the plans that God had for him.”
“My heart is torn. A piece of my heart was taken from me,” said his mother Regina Howard. “My children mean the world to me, and I’m not sure how I’m going to make it without my child.”
Howard was surrounded by loved ones outside of St. Sabina Catholic Church Friday night, to remember her son who was one of the parish’s mentors and was killed in a shooting in Chatham.
“We have to decide that every life we lose, we’re less of a city. We’re less of a country,” said Father Michael Pfleger.
The shooting happened Tuesday night in an alleyway near 87th and Wabash.
The teen was gunned down just days after getting a job at Buddy Bear Car Wash through St. Sabina’s Strong Futures program.
“To lose my son three days after he got his new job and two months after he graduated from high school, it’s indescribable, my pain!” Howard said.
Family and friend remembered a man who had goals and dreams before they marched to help bring justice in his case.
Khalil’s loved ones hope police find and arrest the person who pulled the trigger.
“And, we’re not going to stop until my son gets justice!” Rodney White-El said.
Father Pfleger said Khalil White-El’s funeral will be held at St. Sabina Catholic Church, but arrangements are still pending.
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