DeAngelo Miles, 17, was a male Black/African American who had just stepped into the fragile dawn of adulthood when gunfire ended his life on June 1, 2025. He was found in a West Pullman alley in the 11900 block of South Wallace around 3 a.m., a teenager who had been celebrating the end of high school days earlier, now still under the streetlights as detectives marked casings and neighbors peered from windows.
First responders and the Cook County medical examiner recorded the scene and time; early reports said he’d been shot in the head, and later filings described a fatal wound to the back of his neck. He died there, on the pavement where the party had given way to an ambush.
Only a few days before, DeAngelo Miles, 17, had walked across the stage at Hansberry College Prep as a team captain and student leader, talking about the U.S. Navy and summer work with the Park District. That Saturday night ran long into Sunday morning, friends said, as he left an after-prom gathering and started home. His principal remembered him as charismatic and quick to lift others up; his family told reporters they believed he was robbed—shoes, phone, money gone—while the city processed another loss of a promising kid who had just graduated.
In September, investigators announced a break. An 18-year-old named Jamarie Burns was arrested in Lake Forest and charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery in the killing of DeAngelo Miles, 17. Prosecutors said the meeting was a setup to steal a prized pair of Rick Owens sneakers—a friend’s shoes that Miles had been wearing that night—valued at more than a thousand dollars. Surveillance video, phone records, and online searches filled in the minutes before and after the shots, according to charging arguments in court.
Detectives traced a Dodge Durango seen pulling onto South Wallace as DeAngelo Miles, 17, texted with someone who called himself “Mari.” Two people got out; Miles ran; a bullet struck the back of his neck. When police reached him, the designer shoes were already gone. Within minutes, prosecutors say, Burns met up with friends and produced the sneakers; his phone later yielded a photo of a friend posing with them, deleted messages to the victim, and searches for “size 43 in rick owens.” A prior traffic stop had linked Burns to the same Durango captured on video, they said. A judge ordered him detained; though 17 at the time of the killing, the case was transferred to adult court.
What began as a joyful weekend for DeAngelo Miles, 17, ended as a case file that moved from a sidewalk in West Pullman to an evidence locker and then to a courtroom. The arrest brought formal charges and a detention hearing on the calendar, but for his school and family the story remains the same: a young man on the cusp of his next chapter, gone before sunrise, and a community left to repeat his name.
