Family, friends and gang members on Friday bid farewell to slain teen rapper Joseph “Lil JoJo” Coleman in a gangster rap funeral that was tainted by tension and fear, and ended with cops confiscating a loaded .45-caliber pistol.
While some mourners prayed in the Jones Funeral Home parlor — others smoked weed in the parking lot.
As family members paid their final respects, a crowd of young men eager to take a last look at Lil JoJo’s body surged toward his casket, nearly knocked it to the floor and pushed family members out of the way.
We've seen this sort of behavior in Third World countries. And now we can say we've seen it here....again:
The music stopped.
Lil JoJo’s mother, Robin Russell, screamed into the microphone, “Get the f--- out.”
Minutes later, Chicago police cleared the funeral home at 79th and Kedzie in the Ashburn neighborhood.
Outside, young men and women — some wearing “RIP JoJo” t-shirts and others flashing gang signs and exchanging gang handshakes — danced and sang along with Lil JoJo’s first song, “3HunnaK.”
The song taunts a violent street gang and may have lead to his murder, police say.
How many hundreds of man hours wasted here? Open law breaking, at least one gun at a funeral for someone who glorified gun violence, and it didn't stop at the wake:
- While the funeral procession meandered south to Mt. Hope Cemetery in the Morgan Park neighborhood, police got calls of shots being fired from a white car near 115th and Kedzie. Others called to report someone waving a gun out of a car window.
A funeral procession "meander[ing]?" Even traffic laws and common courtesy mean nothing.