Trevail “Trey” Ridgell, 17, a Black male, was spending a Saturday night in mid-October with a friend in Chicago's Auburn Gresham neighborhood when gunfire found them. Just after 10:25 p.m. on October 14, 2017, he and 19-year-old Justin Gilbert were sitting in a parked van on the 8900 block of South Union Avenue when someone in a passing gray sedan opened fire.
Both teens were struck multiple times and pronounced dead at the scene, the quiet of the block shattered and then swallowed by the arriving lights of squad cars and ambulances.
Ridgell was remembered at Wendell Phillips Academy, where his name was written on a teammate's cleats after his death, a small gesture that tried to hold onto a friend whose cheers used to carry from the stands. The detail that he was shot while sitting in that van fixed in his classmates' minds, a snapshot that never softened with time even as the season marched on.
Detectives opened a homicide investigation, canvassing the area and gathering witness accounts that described the assailants as firing from a moving car before speeding off into the night. In the days that followed, authorities did not announce any suspects or arrests; subsequent coverage and memorial listings tied to the case likewise reflected no charging breakthrough, leaving the shooting officially unsolved.
What remained were the basic facts and the ache around them: two teenagers in a van, a burst of bullets from the street, and a neighborhood left to fold another loss into its history. Police said Area South detectives were investigating, and they asked anyone with knowledge to come forward. Years later, public accounts still indicate no arrests have been reported in connection with Ridgell's killing, the gray sedan that cruised past that night lingering as the story's shadow.
