Tyshawn Blanton | Homicide Watch Chicagohttp://homicides.suntimes.com/victims/tyshawn-blanton/Latest news about Tyshawn Blantonen-usTue, 11 Aug 2015 09:46:07 -0500Trip to Korea helping teen learn new culture, work on film career, move on from father's fatal shootinghttp://homicides.suntimes.com/2015/08/11/trip-to-korea-helping-teen-learn-new-culture-work-on-film-career-move-on-from-fathers-fatal-shooting/<p><a href="http://wordpress.homicidewatch.org/chicago/files/2015/08/Tashanti.jpg"><img src="http://wordpress.homicidewatch.org/chicago/files/2015/08/Tashanti-300x200.jpg" alt="Tashanti Blanton" width="300" height="200" class="size-medium wp-image-12713" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Tashanti Blanton</p><br /> By TRISTAN SIMS<br /> Homicide Watch Chicago</p> <p>Tashanti Blanton has been in a cinematography program since second grade, but never imagined it would serve as a healing tool for getting over the death of her father, <a href="http://homicides.suntimes.com/victims/tyshawn-blanton/">Tyshawn Blanton</a>, murdered in 2013 in an Old Town convenience store.</p> <p>The 13-year-old has already learned the basics of video, having created several short films in the Facets program. Now, she's getting some hands-on experience as an international film ambassador at Facets' International Youth Film Camp in Seoul, South Korea.</p> <p>It's the "opportunity of a lifetime," her mother, Danielle Blackwell said. </p> <p>But she needs help. The program covers room and board, but not airfare and additional fees, which have put the family in a financial bind. Airfare alone was almost $1,800.<br /> <span id="more-12659"></span></p> <p><a href="http://wordpress.homicidewatch.org/chicago/files/2015/08/fleetwood.jpg"><img src="http://wordpress.homicidewatch.org/chicago/files/2015/08/fleetwood-300x225.jpg" alt="Danielle Blackwell (left) and her daughters Tashanti Blanton and Deja Blackwell stand outside the Fleetwood restaurant, where both Blackwells work. | Tristan Sims/for Homicide Watch Chicago" width="300" height="225" class="size-medium wp-image-12735" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Danielle Blackwell (left) and her daughters Tashanti Blanton and Deja Blackwell stand outside the Fleetwood restaurant, where both Blackwells work. | Tristan Sims/for Homicide Watch Chicago</p><br /> In order to offset the cost of sending Tashanti to Korea, her mother created a GoFundMe account to assist with travel and necessities.</p> <p><a href="http://www.gofundme.com/tashanti" target="_blank"><strong>TASHANTI'S GOFUNDME PAGE</strong></a></p> <p>To date, 34 donations have been made and the GoFundMe page is at $1,900, almost two-thirds of the way to its goal of $3,000. </p> <p>"Any donation big or small is appreciated and valued," Blackwell said, saying the program is “doing amazing things” as far as helping her daughter excel and move forward.</p> <p>Tashanti has been taking part in Facets' film camp in the summer and working on special projects, such as being a juror for the Chicago Children's International Film Festival—where she presented awards and spoke at the annual gala, and was even interviewed on radio for the program.</p> <p>This year she applied for the international program and was selected.</p> <p>Tashanti calls it a "good opportunity.” Aside from filming, she wants to gain knowledge about a new culture and learn from the people in Korea. “The main goal is to learn culture, the ultimate goal is to create a short film,” she said.</p> <p>She is in Korea this week, her mother announced on the GoFundMe page, stating Tashanti arrived safely. Documentation of her journey will be on Instagram under the hashtag #TashantiGoesToKorea.</p> <p>Danielle Blackwell thinks the trip would have made Tyshawn Blanton proud.</p> <p>Tashanti hopes it will help her move past the death of her father. The slogan for the festival is “Keep On Going,” which Tashanti has been trying to do.</p> <p>Deja Blackwell says her sister is “beating the family to the punch” as far as moving on, saying she and their mother have not. “I feel happy and inspired,” she said. “I look up to her [Tashanti].”</p> <p>The girls' father was 31 when he was fatally shot in 2013.<br /> <a href="http://wordpress.homicidewatch.org/chicago/files/2015/08/tyshawn.jpg"><img src="http://wordpress.homicidewatch.org/chicago/files/2015/08/tyshawn-225x300.jpg" alt="Tyshawn Blanton" width="225" height="300" class="size-medium wp-image-12694" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Tyshawn Blanton</p><br /> “I was shocked, devastated,” Tashanti said when she learned her father was killed.</p> <p>She and her mother remember Tyshawn Blanton for his love of family, basketball and video games. Danielle Blackwell describes him as a "jokester" and a loving man.</p> <p>But Tashanti has not gone to see her father at the cemetery.</p> <p>“I feel like I would lose it,” she said. “You only get one dad.”</p> <p>The father of seven was killed in a shooting which police said was gang-related, but the family states without hesitation that Tyshawn Blanton was not in a gang</p> <p>“He was not gang-affiliated,” Tashanti said. “He may know people who are in a gang but he was never in a gang.”</p> <p>“He had no time to be a gang-member,” Deja Blackwell said. “He was always with his kids and fiancee.”</p> <p>Although not her biological father, she said Tyshawn Blanton provided for and nurtured her as if she was his own. Now 17, works with her mother at Fleetwood Restaurant and also works at Navy Pier.</p> <p>Tyshawn Blanton will be also remembered for his collection of hats, tons of photos and two youngest sons. “The youngest one looks just like him,” Tashanti said.</p> <p>No one has been charged with the killing. </p> Jeff MayesTue, 11 Aug 2015 09:46:07 -0500http://homicides.suntimes.com/2015/08/11/trip-to-korea-helping-teen-learn-new-culture-work-on-film-career-move-on-from-fathers-fatal-shooting/Tyshawn BlantonFirst murder of 2013 revealed strains in new Old Town landscapehttp://homicides.suntimes.com/2013/07/02/first-murder-of-2013-revealed-strains-in-new-old-town-landscape/<p><strong>By Cheyenne Blount, Breanna Lucas, Lily Oberman and Cat Zakrzewski</strong><br /> <strong><em>Special to Homicide Watch Chicago</em></strong></p> <p>Abe Abdrabo was in a back room of his convenience store on the phone with his cousin when he heard a pop, pop, pop.</p> <p>As he stepped into the main part of his store – the Old Town Mini Mart in the 1300 block of North Sedgwick Street - he saw people racing in different directions, running away from gunshots.</p> <p>Near the rear of the store, 31-year-old TyShawn Blanton lay dying, shot multiple times in the back. Another man, lying near the front of the store, had also been hit and was seriously injured.</p> <p>The shooters, two men wearing gray sweatshirts and dark blue jeans, were already gone.</p> <p>It was 7:05 p.m., January 8. The first Chicago homicide of 2013 had just happened in Old Town, a neighborhood not known for murder.<br /> <span id="more-1178"></span><br /> On the streets surrounding the convenience store, shoppers walk in and out of designer boutiques, couples dine in restaurants and tourists go to shows at Chicago’s famed comedy theater, The Second City.</p> <p>But a few blocks south, barbed wire surrounds row homes that once were a small piece of the sprawling Chicago Housing Authority’s Cabrini-Green public housing project.</p> <p>Cabrini-Green gained national attention for its high concentration of crime and poverty.  Neglect and gang violence created rough living conditions for residents until demolition of the buildings started in 1997.</p> <p>Now, only three Francis Cabrini row houses remain, and the area is undergoing much redevelopment.  New shops have opened. New high-rises are being built. A Target is being put up where some of the Cabrini complexes used to be.</p> <p>The 18th Police District, where the shooting of Blanton took place, is bound by Fullerton Avenue to the north and the Chicago River to the south. It has a low homicide rate compared to other districts, some of which see upwards of 20 homicides a year. But murders in the changing Old Town neighborhood doubled in 2012, from three to six.</p> <p>On the block where Blanton was shot, the most common crime reported since 2013 was criminal trespassing, followed by narcotics offenses and battery.</p> <p>The shooting may have come as a surprise to families moving into the neighborhood. But for some residents who have lived there since the days of Cabrini-Green, the incident is just one of many that signifies the negative impact of its closing.</p> <p>Javanti Smith, who lived in Cabrini-Green before relocating to a public-housing complex adjacent to the non-governmental subsidized Marshall Field Garden Apartments, said the changes in the neighborhood challenged established gang lines.</p> <p>“They packed all different types of gang members into one small neighborhood,” said Smith, 27. “Ones that never got along.”</p> <p>Abdrabo, who recently moved his store to a new location on North Sedgwick, two blocks away, said he was “really surprised” when Blanton was shot at his store.</p> <p>“In all reality, everyone was scared,” he said. “We <i>just</i> started seeing customers come back that we had before.”</p> <p>Abdrabo grew up on the South Side and said gunshots were a familiar sound there, but not here.<br /> Father Patrick Lee of Saint Joseph Catholic Church, a resident of Old Town for 27 years, said young families and couples have begun to move into the “hot neighborhood” that’s becoming a tourist attraction.</p> <p>Even so, he said Old Town still has one of the largest concentrations of subsidized and public housing in the city, including the Francis Cabrini row houses and the Marshall Field Garden Apartments.</p> <p>He said there are newer, more expensive housing options that attract younger families and couples to the east side of the neighborhood.</p> <p>“It’s a real mix of people,” he said.</p> <p>Lee also said the Blanton shooting sent shock waves through the community.</p> <p>"In the past, not much happened on Sedgwick," he said.</p> <p>Sedgwick Street features new housing to the east and public housing to the west.  The shooting happened on the border: “right in the shadow of the new homes” and “right across the street from the Marshall Field buildings,” Lee said.</p> <p>Although Lee said the shooting may have shocked new residents, he did not think that was the case for those that had lived in the area for many years. It just occurred closer to an area that’s generally considered safer than usual, he said.</p> <p>“I think right now the real division is between people who are coming in and want to raise their families and feel their children are unsafe, coming up against people who have lived here,” Lee said.</p> <p>He said one negative impact of the gentrification of the area was that “the poor get squeezed out and the wealthy move in and redevelop.”</p> <p>Ronald Green, a 15-year Old Town resident, said after the closing and demolition of Cabrini-Green, most of their low-income residents were “slammed” into Old Town.</p> <p>The shuffle of Cabrini-Green residents into new housing projects interfered with existing gang lines, said co-owner of the Old Town Mini Mart, Moe Ibrhaim.</p> <p>“This is what’s wrong with this area,” he said. “You’ve got south of Division in a certain gang, and north of Division in a different gang.”</p> <p>Ibrhaim said Old Town sits on the boundary of these two warring gangs. Members of both have been pushed into Marshall Field Garden Apartments after Cabrini-Green’s demolition, creating disruption in the area. He believes this played a role in Blanton’s shooting death. The Chicago Sun-Times reported in January that police said Blanton had gang affiliations, but his family denied those claims. Police have not yet made an arrest in the case.</p> <p>Income diversity also contributes to strife in Old Town. The neighborhood is more diverse than others it borders.</p> <p>“There are side streets with $3 and $4 million dollar homes, and then there’s also federally subsidized housing here,” said Joe Grossman, owner of 5 Boroughs Pizza Company in Old Town.</p> <p>Former Cabrini-Green resident Ruben Mejia, Jr., 52, said a public housing resident in Old Town is targeted as “either a gang banger or a drug dealer.”</p> <p>Mejia said he is grateful for his new home in Marshall Field Garden Apartments, but he compared it to living in a prison.</p> <p>“You can’t even sit down without being harassed,” he said. “You’ve got to go through all kinds of red tape to get into your own residence.”</p> <p>Not all residents of Old Town are treated that way, said 20-year-old Tra Marlui. He’s lived in Marshall Field his entire life and said he is accosted regularly by police.</p> <p>“We’re stuck in a box here. But once you’re outside, you see more whites,” Marlui said. “And that’s when the police are stricter.”</p> <p>Another former Cabrini-Green resident, Hazel Dorsey, said the known police presence in the neighborhood can have both positive and negative effects for the residents. She said it causes people to not be as cautious as they should be if police are always around.</p> <p>“It gives people a sense of complacency,” Dorsey said.</p> <p>The shooting has not shaken that complacency, especially among long-time business owners. Grossman, the pizza place owner, said the only crime he has encountered while operating his business is teenagers stealing from the tip jar.</p> <p>Although the shooting shocked Abdrabo, he said he still considers the neighborhood relatively safe. Police take their lunch breaks in his store, and he’s developed a good relationship with them, he said.</p> <p>“Coming out here, I’m walking up and down the streets, talking to people,” he said. “It’s not the South Side, that’s for sure.”</p> <p><em>(This story was produced for Homicide Watch by students in the "Chicago, Journalism and Social Change" class at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Funding for the reporting was provided, in part, by the Alumnae of Northwestern University's Gifts and Grants Committee.)</em></p> John CarpenterTue, 02 Jul 2013 09:48:18 -0500http://homicides.suntimes.com/2013/07/02/first-murder-of-2013-revealed-strains-in-new-old-town-landscape/Tyshawn BlantonFather of seven shot dead not a gang member, family sayshttp://homicides.suntimes.com/2013/04/08/father-of-seven-shot-dead-not-a-gang-member-family-says/<p><b>Sun-Times Media Wire, January 10, 2013 3:44PM</b></p> <p>The family of a father of seven, gunned down outside an Old Town store where he’d gone to buy diapers and milk for his young children Tuesday, are denying police allegations that he was a gang member.</p> <p>TyShawn Blanton, 31, and a 20-year-old man were shot multiple times about 6:15 p.m. Tuesday in the 1300 block of North Sedgwick Avenue, according to police. Blanton was pronounced dead less than an hour later at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center.</p> <p>Blanton’s fiancé, Melissa Morris, said he had gone to the store to buy diapers, milk and Lottery tickets. Blanton had seven children between 1-month and 18 years old.</p> <p>“He was coming out of the store to make it home and eat dinner,” she said.</p> <p>Police said at the time that both Blanton and the other victim had gang affiliations, an allegation Blanton’s family members denied.</p> <p>“He is not in a gang. He has seven kids, that’s the only gang he’s got. He’s a family man,” his fiancé said.</p> <p>While family members confirmed that Blanton -- who grew up in Cabrini-Green and later moved to Englewood, where he attended high school -- had been arrested in the past, they said they were not for gang-related offenses.</p> <p>“He was a loving person. He loved his kids,” his sister, Taza Blanton, said Thursday. “He took care of his kids, and took care of my mom. He went to see her every day and talked to her on the phone every day.”</p> <p>A police spokesman reiterated Thursday that records show he was a member of the Conservative Vice Lords.</p> <p>Blanton had formerly worked as a barber, but stopped to help raise his children, his sister said. He enjoyed playing basketball, paintball, going to concerts and spending time with his family.</p> <p>His mother, Brenda Calhoun, said he had the names of his children tattooed on his body.</p> <p>An autopsy Wednesday determined Blanton died of multiple gunshot wounds and the death was ruled a homicide, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office.</p> <p>The other man was shot in the back multiple times and taken in critical condition to Northwestern Memorial Hospital.</p> <p>Blanton was the city’s 14th homicide of 2013. No one was in custody as of Thursday afternoon and Area North detectives are investigating.</p> John CarpenterMon, 08 Apr 2013 13:58:24 -0500http://homicides.suntimes.com/2013/04/08/father-of-seven-shot-dead-not-a-gang-member-family-says/Tyshawn BlantonMan shot, killed, at convenience storehttp://homicides.suntimes.com/2013/04/08/man-shot-killed-at-convenience-store/<p><b>Sun-Times Media Wire, January 9, 2013 5:50AM</b></p> <p><span style="color: #444444;">Two men were shot--one fatally--at a convenience store Tuesday night in the Old Town neighborhood, authorities said.</span></p> <p>The shooting happened about 6:15 p.m. in the 1300 block of North Sedgwick Street, police said.</p> <p>TyShawn Blanton, 31, was shot multiple times and died at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center at 7:05 p.m, according to police and the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. An autopsy for Blanton, of the 1300 block of North Halsted Street, is scheduled for Wednesday.</p> <p>A 20-year-old man was also shot. He suffered gunshot wounds to the back, police said, and was taken in critical but “stable” condition to Northwestern Memorial Hospital.</p> <p>Police said the men were gang members.</p> <p>No arrests have been made as Area North detectives investigate.</p> <p>The death will be the 14th homicide of 2013, pending the results of an autopsy. Additionally, Chicago Police have fatally shot one person this year.</p> John CarpenterMon, 08 Apr 2013 13:57:18 -0500http://homicides.suntimes.com/2013/04/08/man-shot-killed-at-convenience-store/Tyshawn Blanton