Family Members Gathered

(Sent to me with underlined emphasis by a regular reader and this comment: Family members gathered to remember the boy?!? No one questions the mother's decisions in life??!!) Tribune:

Cop knocks, mom rushes to her dying son
13-year-old beaten to death in gang fight

Pamela Hester-Jones woke up at 10:30 p.m. Monday to a Chicago police detective knocking on her apartment door.

"He asked me if I was Lazarus Jones' mother and when I said yes he said, `Your son's been injured,'" Hester-Jones said.

But it was worse. Lazarus, 13, an 8th grader at Budlong Elementary School, had been fatally beaten during a gang-related fight Monday night in the Albany Park neighborhood, police said.

Hester-Jones arrived at Children's Memorial Hospital in time to hold her son's foot and say a prayer before he died early Tuesday.

And although police have not determined if Lazarus was a gang member, his family insists he had no gang ties and was a good student who had no enemies.

"I don't know what happened to my son. It was a tragedy, a mistake. He wasn't in any gangs," his mother said.

Lazarus, of the 2500 block of West Foster Avenue, was "beaten with a blunt object" around 9:45 p.m. Monday outside a liquor store at 3132 W. Lawrence Ave., said Chicago Police Officer Hector Alfaro.

Hester-Jones said she last spoke to her son at 1:30 p.m. Monday as she was heading out the door to visit her other son, Jasper, who is in Cook County Jail.

She returned about 6:30 p.m. to an empty home but did not think much of it because Lazarus often plays outside with friends and has his own key, she said.

Assuming Lazarus would be home before 10 p.m., and exhausted from a long day, Hester-Jones, who is five months' pregnant, took a nap and woke up to the detective's knocking on her door.

On Tuesday, family members gathered to remember the boy who they said enjoyed roller skating, writing in his journal, drawing, surfing the Internet and golfing.

He was looking forward to going to high school and possibly running track or playing golf, Hester-Jones said.

On Tuesday, balloons, teddy bears and flowers created a makeshift memorial where he was killed.

Police had no one in custody Tuesday evening.

Family members gathered...after he was dead.