SILENT FEAR KEEPS GANG DEATHS UNSOLVED Series: Killing our children. 55 Dead in 1993 NORTH SPORTS FINAL Edition

• Published in: Chicago tribune (1963)
• Main Author: David Silverman Andrew Martin, Tribune Staff Writers
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chicago, Ill Tribune Publishing Company, LLC 30.10.1993
• ISSN: 1085-6706

There were plenty of witnesses to the murder of Joseph Johnson, 14, but no one would tell police who shot the Waukegan boy to death. Investigators say this is typical in gang-related homicides. Of the 55 children killed in 1993 in the six-county area, 13 died in gang-related violence. Eleven young men watched as Joseph Johnson was gunned down on Jackson Street in Waukegan during a midnight gang incident, police would later learn. To investigators, the Waukegan case is representative of a pattern of gang-related homicides, crimes where victims are often killed at random, where witnesses fear retribution and where gang members abide by a code of silence and often save vengeance for themselves. Add to that the deep-seated distrust of the police by some communities, and it is easy to see how investigators stumble into dead ends.