Kentrell “NuNu” Thompson, 25, a Black male, was spending the early hours of Saturday, January 28, 2017, in his car at a gas station on the 1200 block of North Halsted in Chicago's Goose Island area when gunfire shattered the quiet. Someone opened up on the parked vehicle, firing several rounds that struck Thompson as he sat inside. Responding officers and the medical examiner's office later detailed the scene and the timing: a 1:40 a.m.
burst of shots at the station on North Halsted, a sudden, targeted attack that left no chance to flee.
He suffered a gunshot wound to the head, and despite the swift arrival of authorities, he was pronounced dead at 2:29 a.m., the end of a life known by family and friends through the nickname “NuNu.” The coverage that morning placed him there in the driver's seat, the streets slick with winter cold, as investigators combed the lot for shell casings and threads that might explain who had waited in the darkness and why. Reports also noted he lived on the city's West Side and that police identified him as a documented gang member, a detail that made headlines but did not, on its own, answer the deeper questions of motive.
In the days that followed, there was no named suspect, no arrest to bring the story toward resolution. Contemporary accounts of the case offered no description of a fleeing shooter and no announcement that anyone had been taken into custody, a silence that left the killing to stand among a string of weekend shootings that winter. Public incident logs and memorial listings recorded his death and its coordinates, but they could add little more than a date, a block, and a brief sketch of what happened before the trail went cold.
