5-Year-Old Chicago Twin Shot to Death

Filed under: News, Race and Civil Rights

It's a story that we hear all too often: Kids playing in a house find a gun. They have no idea that the gun is real. The kids begin playing with the gun and someone ends up seriously injured or dead.

That's what police say happened in Chicago when a set of inseparable 5-year-old twins found a gun the night before they were supposed to start kindergarten.

The boys had just taken a bath and were putting on their pajamas, when their grandmother heard a single gunshot. Jonathan Jackson was shot once in the stomach. He was rushed to the hospital and died a little more than an hour later. It's unclear which child fired the weapon, but relatives are pretty sure the kids thought it was a toy.

"They never had a fight over anything," Bruce Prince, the twin's great-uncle, told the Associated Press. "If they had a bag of chips, they shared it. They don't fight for it."

Family members believed the gun belonged to the 17-year-old uncle of the twins. He was brought in for police questioning.

Now, this could turn into a double tragedy. A 17-year-old could be headed to prison for a considerable stretch, a 5-year-old is dead and another 5-year-old may be scarred for life after witnessing his brother's death.



It's terrible that a 17-year-old feels the need to carry a weapon and even worse that a gun was left unsecured in a home with two young children.

This is just another example of the epidemic of violence that has struck the black community. Whoever owned that gun may have used it to perpetrate a violent act on someone else had the twins not found it.

Guns are simply too easy to gain access to in this country and we produce far too many of them. From mass workplace shootings to domestic disputes to street violence and robberies, guns are the weapon of choice. The violence will continue until we do something about their availability.

Family members described Jonathan as the natural leader among the twins. He helped his brother, Ja'Lin, get dressed and tied his brother's shoes because he had learned to do it already.

Now Ja'Lin is wondering where his twin is; he doesn't understand that he's dead.

"He don't understand the concept of life and death," said great-grandmother Lucille Prince. "He thinks Jonathan is in the hospital."

"It got so chaotic so quick," Bruce Prince told the Chicago Tribune. "To see him being carried out, his legs lifeless, it will haunt me forever."

Just imagine the effect this is going to have on Ja'Lin.

Now this family is grieving the loss of one piece of its future. We should all mourn the loss of this young boy's potential.

"I just wish we could turn back the clock and start the day all over," said Bruce Prince.

Unfortunately, it's too late for this family but not too late for others. If you have a gun in a house with children, now is your chance to do something. If you have an illegal gun, it's not too late to get rid of it. Hurry, though, we don't know what tomorrow may bring.

"You don't wake up thinking something like this is going to happen. When I woke up, it was a sunny day," Bruce Prince added.

 

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