Homicide Watch Chicago

John Carpenter and Cat Zakrzewski
Homicide Watch Chicago

If Ed Cooper loved playing video games in his bedroom even more than the typical 15-year-old boy, his mother let it slide. Those games, and his beloved pet cat, kept him out of reach of the gangs in Lawndale.

“He would stay in the house and watch TV and eat cereal all day,” she said.

But even Cooper, an A and B student at Orr Academy High School who police confirmed had no gang ties, liked to get outside every once in a while to play real basketball with his friends.

That was the plan Monday evening, when he was murdered.
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Priscilla Adams was behind her house when an unidentified gun man opened fire on her son, Stephon Wright and Wright’s girlfriend. Wright was the only victim in the fatal shooting.

Homicide Watch Chicago is a reporting project to dedicated to covering every victim’s story. John Carpenter, a veteran crime reporter, is the editor for the project.