On November 22, 2016, in Chicago's West Garfield Park, D([Ceshawn Adams, a 20 year old Black male, was standing in the 3500 block of West Van Buren when a dark car rolled up around 5:45 p.m. and someone inside opened fire.
The burst of shots shattered the early evening, and the car sped off, leaving him collapsed on the sidewalk as neighbors and passersby tried to make sense of what had just happened.
Police and the Cook County medical examiner later confirmed the account: a drive-by
attack that ended almost as quickly as it began.
Deshawn was struck multiple times in the head and chest and was pronounced dead at the scene at 6:08 p.m.
Records listed his residence in the 6700 block of South Eberhart, miles from the West Side block where he fell. Blue lights washed over Van Buren Street as detectives marked casings and canvassed for security cameras, while officers worked to push the gathering crowd back behind tape.
Early reports offered no description of the gunman or the vehicle beyond its dark color, and authorities did not announce any arrests in those initial accounts.
Detectives opened a homicide investigation and appealed for information, a familiar ritual on a corridor of the West Side that had seen similar shootings.
Public listings that memorialized the case echoed those sparse details: the date, the block, the neighborhood, the drive-by that took the life of 20 year old Deshawn Adams.
His killing unfolded in a year when Chicago's toll from gunfire surged. By late November, the city had already passed 700 homicides for the first time since the late 1990s; the year would close with more than 760 murders.
November alone was among the deadliest months of 2016, a grim backdrop that framed the brief news item about a young man in West Garfield Park and the unanswered questions that followed.
