Chicago Teen Killed Moments After Mother Warned Him ‘Don’t Go Out’

File photo of a police car. (Illustration - Shutterstock)

A 15-year-old Chicago boy was shot and killed just seconds after his mother warned him not to leave the house.

Darion Strong was murdered just a few doors down from his home in Chicago’s Fuller Park on the night of Tuesday, March 26, police said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Chicago police were cited by the news outlet as saying the teen was standing on a sidewalk at 9:50 p.m. in the South Side neighborhood when an unknown assailant approached on foot and shot him to death.

The teen was transported to Comer Children’s Hospital.

Medics were unable to save Strong’s life and about an hour later, he was pronounced dead.

Police are investigating the incident as a homicide.

‘Death and Jail’

The boy’s mother told reporters she had a premonition something tragic was about to happen and urged her son to stay indoors just moments before he was shot.

“Don’t go out that door,” Darnielle Briggs told the Chicago Tribune she said to her son moments before bullets fatally struck him in the back and chest.

Briggs told the publication her son told her he was heading out to meet a friend. She said she sensed danger and told him so.

“I told him not to go nowhere,” Briggs told the Chicago Tribune. “ ‘Ain’t nothing out there for you but death and jail.’ Imagine telling your son that right before this happens.”

Briggs told ABC7 that moments after her son left the house she heard gunfire. She said she found him sprawled on the street.

“It hurts to see your baby take his last breath in front of you after you just told him not to, just telling him—come on now, you don’t need to be out here,” Briggs told ABC7.

The boy’s mother told the Chicago Tribune that conversations with his friends suggest the perpetrator may have been someone with a grievance against her son.

Crisis responder Andrew Holmes was cited by ABC7 as saying that the boy was ambushed several doors down from his home.

Darion Strong was a freshman at Tilden High School and, according to the Chicago Tribune, on the honor roll.

CBS reported that police have confirmed the victim did not have any gang ties.

Area resident Lenora Amos told ABC7 outlet that “it’s rough around here” and that tragic incidents like this are “what we’re used to.”

Chicago Murder Rate Down

Police officials have said that for the second year in a row, the murder rate in Chicago declined in 2018.

Chicago, sometimes described as the nation’s “murder capital,” saw nearly 100 fewer murders in 2018 compared to 2017, according to data from the Chicago Police Department’s end-of-year crime summary.

The murder rate decline represents a 15 percent drop.

Meanwhile, since 2016, murders as a result of a shooting have declined 31 percent in total.

This double-digit reduction was the greatest drop in homicides of any major American city, outpacing New York (0.37 percent drop), Los Angeles (9.2 percent drop), and Houston (6.64 percent drop), according to the data published Dec. 31.

Shootings, in general, are down by 32 percent in the city since 2016. But Chicago, the third largest city in the United States still had more murders than the combined total in New York City and Los Angeles, the No. 1 and No. 2 largest U.S. cities, respectively.

Other crimes such as burglaries and motor vehicle thefts and carjackings all decreased in 2018, compared to 2017.

Epoch Times reporter Bowen Xiao contributed to this report.