- Late Wednesday night, Banks' 7-year-old daughter Heaven was sitting next to Banks as she sold snacks and snow cones when someone opened fire down the street around 10:45 p.m. A stray bullet hit the little girl as she ran back to her house in the 1700 block of North Luna Avenue, police and family say.
Heaven was shot in the back and died half an hour later.
This, however, is completely asinine:
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday lashed out at the gang thugs who shot and killed a 7-year-old selling lemonade under her mother’s watch in the latest example of the gang violence that’s driving a 38 percent spike in Chicago homicides.
Emanuel clearly seems to be running out of things to say when innocent kids are caught in the gang crossfire or when bodies and shooting victims pile up after each summer weekend.
So he took a new tact after the Wednesday night murder of Heaven Sutton, a 7-year-old Austin girl who had begged her mother to move after several recent shootings in their West Side neighborhood.
Instead of defending gang strategies that don’t appear to be working, the mayor went on the offensive against the cold-hearted gang members engaged in a shootout around a kid selling lemonade on a summer night and a mom who was right there watching.
“This is not about crime. This is about values. Take your gang conflict away from a 7-year-old. Who raised you? You have a 7-year-old selling lemonade. You’re a member of a gang coming to get lemonade and another gang member is driving by. Where were you raised and who raised you? Stay away from the kids,” the mayor said, his voice rising.