Thursday, December 9, 2010
Support Your Local Blog: ChathamNOW!
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Blog Question
Do you think that there should be a Costco Wholesale store in the Chatham Market, and should Mayor Richard M. Daley grant Costco a $1 million tax break incentive to set up shop there to create 600 jobs for Chatham? Leave your comments on the comment line.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Soon it will be the 12 Days of Christmas and a Great Place for a Holiday Feast Selection is the Chatham Food Market!!!
The Twelve Days of Christmas from December 25Th through January 5Th make for a great holiday feast...Make sure you stock up on fresh produce and great meats and poultry for the Christmas and New Year's holiday season with great grocery shopping at Chatham Food Market, 327 East 79Th Street in the heart of the Chatham retail strip! http://www.chathamfoods.com/
Hey, How About This?!
Do you think the Chatham Market should have golf pro shops and ski pro shops and the 84Th and King Drive vacant lot should be developed into an indoor year-round ice skating rink with an attached ski school for the winter and a golf school for the spring and summer? Or alternatively, use the vacant lot for a temporary ice skating rink with tarp layered with ice for just the winter months to give the youngsters a place to skate. The landlord can share in the proceeds while they amass funds for development. Leave your comments on the comment line.
It's Time for a Chatham Youth Mentoring Corps
Do you think mentors for the young people in our community would prove useful toward the development of our community. It would be productive if educated, skilled and trained men and women, seniors and middle-aged residents would reach out to the youth in Chatham, bring them under their wings and mentor them with internships and apprenticeships in business, the professions, athletics, the arts and sciences, beyond what they have learned in the school systems, and give them a stipend for their efforts and participation. Would you like to be a mentor for a few hours a week? It would cross the generational gaps with a bridge of trust, communication, and understanding to reach areas of common interests. Perhaps you would want to step up and create and lead a Chatham Youth Mentoring Corps. Let us know by leaving your comments on the comment line.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Please Join Me
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Fear silenced shooting victim -- until cop slain
The gun's flash lit up the night, illuminating the face of the shooter in the gangway.
Fernando Townsend later identified the gunman as 19-year-old Timothy Herring.
It was five months before police say Herring again fired a weapon in the South Chicago neighborhood -- this time killing a Chicago police officer and a former Chicago Housing Authority officer.
Townsend said he had no idea why Herring shot him that June night. At first, he was willing to cooperate with authorities, but he changed his mind after his mother, fearing retaliation, raised concerns about her safety in the tough Southeast Side community where they lived.
But Townsend's glimpse of the gunman's face that night was not in vain.
This week the identification became a key piece of the evidence built against Herring, who was charged Monday in the cold-blooded slaying of Chicago police Officer Michael Flisk as well as Townsend's close friend, Stephen Peters, who grew up a block away and dated his sister.
The missed opportunity to have Herring locked up months before he allegedly killed the two is not lost on Townsend, who feels anger within himself that he couldn't persuade his mother to let him cooperate last summer.
It even took an hourlong conversation with his mother in her front room Sunday night with Chicago detectives, her pastor and Townsend before her fears were calmed and she gave the go-ahead for her son to help prosecute Herring.
"Now I am a voice for Steve," Townsend, 41, said Tuesday as Herring was facing murder charges in court. "I can help him."
A disheveled Herring -- who prosecutors said had cut his own braids to evade capture -- listened in court Tuesday as Cook County prosecutors laid out the chilling confrontation Friday in the alley behind Peters' family home in the 8100 block of South Burnham Avenue.
Flisk, an evidence technician and a 20-year veteran, arrived at the alley early that afternoon to investigate the burglary of Peters' car, a customized red Mustang GT.
Herring had allegedly hatched the break-in months ago, telling a friend then that he wanted to "hit the victim for his sounds," meaning steal his stereo equipment from the car, prosecutors said.
As Flisk, 46, examined the scene in front of Peters, Herring, who lived across the alley, walked up and told Peters he knew who had pulled off the burglary, according to prosecutors. Peters, 44, replied it didn't matter because Flisk was able to recover fingerprints that would lead to the burglar's arrest, prosecutors said.
Herring, paroled earlier this year after serving half of a six-year prison sentence for the 2007 armed robbery of a liquor store, was determined to avoid a return to prison, police said. He turned away before drawing a gun, then shot each victim in the head once, prosecutors said.
Herring started carting off two trash cans containing the stolen stereo equipment, but then "noticed one of the victims was still moving," prosecutors alleged. Herring "then went up to the victims and shot each one a second time in the head," they said.
Herring was held without bail by Judge Ramon Ocasio III. He faces a potential death sentence if convicted of the two counts of first-degree murder.
A second man, Timothy Willis, 22, was also charged for allegedly helping conceal the murder weapon, which remains missing. He was ordered held on $250,000 bail.
Herring allegedly told several people in recent days that he had killed two people.
Several sources said the work done by Flisk on Friday afternoon -- particularly the evidence photos he took in the minutes before he was shot -- helped detectives understand what happened in the alley.
There was also a fingerprint recovered from inside one of the garbage cans that was linked to Herring, prosecutors said.
But in a key break, investigators traced four 9 mm shell casings found at the murder scene to the gun used to shoot Townsend last June, prosecutors said.
Within two days of the double homicide, detectives came to Townsend's door to tell him they suspected that the same man who shot him June 18 had shot his childhood friend.
"I felt anger, toward me, for not convincing my mom to let me do the right thing, no matter how much I tried," said Townsend, who had pleaded with her after his shooting last summer.
Townsend's mother was terrified of the neighborhood thugs, fearing they would attack her family or burn her house.
"Her sanity and peace of mind means more to me than anything," Townsend said.
When detectives came looking for help this past weekend, Townsend's mother remained fearful. But after praying with her pastor, she relented. Townsend cooperated with authorities, officially naming Herring as the person who shot him about 1 a.m. June 18 in the 8000 block of South Burnham Avenue.
He remembers the shooting vividly. Herring allegedly circled the block in a car as Townsend and his friends stood in the street. About 20 minutes later, Herring stepped from between two houses. He was visible under the street lights, Townsend said. Then the gun exploded.
"Once I (saw) that fire jump out that gun and it lit his face up ... I took off running," Townsend said. "The second shot is the one that caught me in the back."
Herring is now charged not only in the Flisk and Peters murders, but also in Townsend's shooting.
Townsend said he felt good about following through. Neither Peters nor Flisk deserved to die, he said.
Townsend shared a laugh with his friend a few weeks ago about how they were both walking with canes -- Peters because of a pulled hamstring and Townsend on account of his shooting.
"He was just doing his job," Townsend said of Flisk, a father of four. "It's sad. This guy is coming to do his job, and somebody took his life."
While Townsend can understand why his mother was so fearful in June, he hopes others will learn a lesson from this.
"You know something, tell something," he said. "If don't nobody step up to do nothing, it's going to continue to happen. That was my biggest point. ... If I don't stop this guy, he is going to hurt somebody else. That's the part that really gets to me." (Courtesy of Chicago Breaking News)
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