Renee Soto enjoyed the simple things about his new home in Chicago, like coming home from work and walking to the store. But the 21-year-old Mexican immigrant was nervous about gang violence in his Belmont Cragin neighborhood, and often asked one of his cousins tag along.
“He always asked me to go to the store with him, because he was scared to go by himself,” said Esteban Blancas, 18, his younger cousin.
Soto’s fears were realized Friday evening, when a man opened fire on him and his cousins as they sat on their porch in the 2900 block of N. Kilpatrick. It was just before 8 p.m., and Blancas said Soto and his cousins were doing what they usually did on warm evenings.
“They were just, like, chilling out, having fun, joking with each other,” he said, standing in the door of his house and pointing down at the front steps and the small yard beyond. Blancas said a man approached from the street nearby, and “some words were spoken,” then the man started shooting. No arrests have been made in the case.
Blancas said he was at church at the time, and got a call from a friend that there had been gunfire. By the time he got home, Soto was dead and Blancas’ mother gave him the news.
“My cousin was special to me. He was a good person,” he said.
Soto moved to the Chicago from Mexico four months ago, and was a hard-working man, doing construction projects with another cousin, Blancas said.
“When he wasn’t working,m he loved to play with his cousins. He loved to play baseball,” Blancas said.
Blancas added that this kind of violence is unusual on his block.
“I’ve been here, like, eight or nine years. Nothing like this has ever happened,” he said.
- John Carpenter; jcarpenter@suntimes.com