Charinez Jefferson will never know she had a baby boy Tuesday.
Her son will never know her.
The 17-year-old mom — six months pregnant and looking forward to learning her unborn child’s sex during an ultrasound exam Thursday — didn’t live long enough.
Gunned down by a shooter who jumped from a passing car as she walked home from a convenience store in the Marquette Park neighborhood Tuesday night, Charinez was declared dead within 45 minutes.
Doctors at Advocate Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn couldn’t save her, but performed an emergency C-section to safely deliver her tiny son.
The as-yet unnamed, prematurely-born boy is “fighting for his life right now,” Charinez’s mother Debbie Jefferson said Wednesday as family members mourned, searched for answers and prayed for the child and his 1-year-old big brother. The baby was in stable condition, authorities said.
And now, she will affect the lives of hundreds of people. Cops mostly. Because the exempt structure will feel some need to redeploy tens of dozens of officers to saturate the area she was shot. Teams of cops will be forced to deploy in a "box" or violence zone for weeks, maybe months. Detectives will be working untold hours, missing family events and such because of an attitude that having two kids before 17 is normal and that solving a dispute with gunfire is acceptable.
Then there will be the community activists, printing up t-shirts, and the "reverends" shouting about "gun control" and Cease Fire blaming everyone except the shooter and the community, all demanding more programs and of course, more money, meaning tens of thousands of taxpayers will be affected in some manner.
Do we sound bitter? We're just sick of the nonsense and the oh-so-predicable way it's going to play out.