On June 27, 2020, in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood, 1-year-old Sincere A. Gaston, a Black male child, rode home from a laundromat strapped into his rear car seat while his mother, 22, drove south on Halsted near 60th Street. Another car pulled alongside, and someone opened fire, seven to eight rounds tore into the passenger side.
The male victim, 1 year old, was struck in the chest; his mother was grazed in the head. She rushed him to St.
Bernard Hospital, where the male victim, 1 year old, was pronounced dead; the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide. The male victim, 1 year old, was identified as Sincere A. Gaston.
Grief spilled into the streets in the days that followed, balloons, doves, and pleas for peace. At a vigil, the parents described their loss and their pain, while police officials said the barrage of bullets suggested the attack wasn't random. Police also suggested the child's father might have been the intended target; the father publicly denied that, saying he was being treated like a suspect when he was a grieving parent. In those raw hours, the name Sincere, male, 1 year old, became a refrain, called out by family and neighbors who demanded answers.
Detectives turned to the public for help. They circulated images and video of a gray or silver four-door sedan, possibly an Infiniti with an Illinois temporary tag, seen in the area at the time of the shooting, last observed heading north on Wentworth from 63rd. The call for tips framed a single, chilling picture: a moving car, a brief pull-up, and gunfire that ended the life of the male victim, 1 year old, Sincere A. Gaston.
Chicago responded with money and shoe-leather. A $25,000 reward was posted almost immediately, and community groups fanned out door-to-door; within days, business owners and activists had pooled at least $50,000 for information leading to charges in the killing of the male victim, Sincere A. Gaston, 1 year old. Their flyers and knocks underscored a simple truth: the city wanted someone to come forward.
On what would have been his second birthday that October, family gathered again to remember Sincere A. Gaston, male, 1 year old at the time of his death, lighting candles and calling for justice.
At that time, no one was in custody in the case, and public appeals for tips continued. The story of 1 year old Sincere A. Gaston, remained a wound for relatives and neighbors who kept his name alive amid the city's march of headlines.
When describing Sincere A. Gaston, a Black 1 year old male, family and community accounts remember him as a joyful child; where ethnicity is documented, he is described as African American, a detail invoked by those who mourned him as they pressed for an arrest.
The absence of answers left only the fragments of a summer afternoon: a mother's errand, a young child, his whole life ahead of him, in a car seat, and a fleeing sedan that turned a routine drive into an unsolved killing, thus stealing whatever the future may have held for young Sincere A. Gaston.
