Mother loses fourth child to gun violence

Shirley Chambers of Chicago had four children - three boys and a girl. Now they're all gone. [Photo/Agencies]

CHICAGO - Shirley Chambers of Chicago had four children - three boys and a girl. Now they're all gone.

Chambers will bury her son, Ronnie Chambers, on Monday. He was the last of the single mother's children - all victims of gun violence in Chicago over a period of 18 years.

"I was in shock, truly, because I'm just knowing that Ronnie's going to grow up and be an old man. That was in my heart," said Chambers, 54.

The loss of four siblings to the same fate illustrates the depth of Chicago's stubborn gun violence problem and the city leaders' struggle to bring it under control.

In the national debate over curbing gun violence in the wake of the Newtown school massacre, in which 20 first-graders and six adults were killed, Chicago's plight stands out. Murders, mostly committed by guns, topped 500 in 2012 for the first time in four years - even though Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country.

During the first 30 days of 2013, America's third largest city has seen 157 shootings and 42 homicides. The dead included Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old girl who had performed with her school band at President Barack Obama's inauguration last week, and Ronnie "Scooby" Chambers, 33.

Chambers, a music producer and former gang member, had attended a "listening party" for an artist he was mentoring, his mother said in an interview.

Afterward, Ronnie Chambers was sitting in a parked car on the city's West Side after 2 am on January 26 when someone opened fire, striking him in the head and killing him. No suspects are in custody, and police say the investigation is ongoing.

Chambers raised her four children in the city's notorious Cabrini-Green housing project, featured in the 1970s sitcom "Good Times" and known nationally for its problems with gangs and drugs. Most of the buildings have been torn down in recent years for redevelopment.

Chambers now lives in one of the newer apartments built in the neighborhood. Sitting in her living room with her sisters, sharing photos of her children, she was soft-spoken and seemed slightly dazed by grief.

Chambers remembered taking her children to the zoo and watching them ride their "Big Wheels" tricycles. "They were very happy kids," she said.

But as the children got older, it was harder to keep them safe in a world ruled by violence. "I couldn't keep them close to me anymore because they was big now, you know, and they go places," Chambers said.

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