In the hours since a mass shooting took place at a River North restaurant, the family of Devonte Williamson has come across multiple videos on social media of the gunfire that killed him.
“You see people running and they are constantly shooting,” said Andrea Williamson, the mother of Devonte Williamson. “To do that to people — the majority of them were women — to take people’s loved ones away, they need to be locked up.”
Friends and family of Devonte Williamson were at his family’s Hegewisch home Thursday, supporting a family in disbelief over the 23-year-old’s fatal shooting Wednesday night in River North. Three other people were killed and 14 people were wounded in the drive-by shooting that happened around 11 p.m. as a crowd gathered outside the Artis Restaurant and Lounge, 311 W. Chicago Ave., where an album-release party was taking place.
The other victims who died in the shooting were identified as Taylor Walker, 26; Aviance King, 27; and Leon Henry, 25, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Devonte’s brother, Darell Williamson, 24, late Wednesday received a call from a friend informing him that Devonte had been shot in the chest. He and others rushed to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where they initially believed Devonte was taken, but later tracked his phone to Stroger Hospital.
“We waited a long time but then I knew by my mother’s reaction that it was not good,” Darell Williamson said, describing the scene at Stroger where doctors informed his mother that his brother died.
Andrea Williamson said her son was at the River North nightspot to support his girlfriend, Melanie Doyle, a drill rapper known as Mello Buckzz, who was having an album release party.
Her son was there with Doyle, another man and Leon Henry, she said. Doyle and the other man were not harmed, but Henry was among those killed, she said.
She said Devonte, who grew up in Hegewisch and graduated from Chicago Vocational Academy, had a commercial driver’s license and was searching for work driving a truck. He was the second oldest of seven children. He had a 2-year-old daughter, Nevaeh.
“He was very outgoing, very popular, and very protective,” she said. “He really cared about the people he knows.”
The family has heard rumors the shooting was gang related, but Andrea Williamson said her son was not affiliated with a gang.
She said her son had just started dating Doyle a few weeks ago, though she thinks they knew each other for longer.
“I just met her for the first time a few days ago so I don’t know much about her,” Andrea Williamson said.
She called for police to arrest the shooters.
“To go shoot up 19 people, to me there is no reason to do something like that,” Andrea Williamson said.
As the family waits for answers from police, she said the family will start planning a birthday party for Devonte’s daughter, Nevaeh, without her son. The girl will turn 3 years old later this month.
