Kent Flowers Jr., 18, was the kind of son who sacrificed going out with friends to help his father build a closet.When those friends stopped by late Friday night, Flowers went outside his home in the 1900 block of Harrison Street in Maywood and got into a car with them to visit. The night exploded with gunfire and he and two other 18-year-olds, Devin Stokes and Oscar Pritchett, suffered multiple wounds. All three later died at Loyola University Medical Center. The driver was critically injured. The four were close, each striving for achievement, relatives said. Stokes was to attend Northeastern Illinois University on scholarship this fall, his mother, Theresa Stokes, said Sunday. Pritchett and the injured driver, whom the Tribune is not naming because he is a witness, were working at O'Hare International Airport, and her son was going to try for a job there too, Stokes said.
"Everything was always about them being together," she said.The injured man remained at Loyola Sunday, family members said.He and Devin Stokes had formed the Young Money Club to encourage their peers to succeed honestly, Theresa Stokes said.
"Making money, but doing it legitimately, and not seeking out the gangs, and keeping away from violence," were its goals, she said.
As those close to the young men struggled with their grief, police said they had no information on a motive for the killings. The gunfire came about 12:15 a.m. Saturday. All that marked the spot Sunday were a few shards of glass and a small memorial of flowers, a poster and candles on a ragged elm outside the Flowers' home.
Residents worry these killings and other recent homicides, including one Aug. 4, are reversing a hard-fought decline in crime after several years of increases.
All but Flowers had graduated in the spring from Proviso East High School in Maywood.
Principal Milton Patch said the young men had avoided gangs and were aiming at college or working. Staff members will be "devastated" this week when they return to prepare for the start of the school year next week, he said."Things had been getting better, but we're in some sort of mad rash of shootings," Patch said.Flowers, a visual artist who also rapped, loved schoolwork even though he had some difficulty in completing high school, his parents said."He came home, he did his homework—I didn't have to be behind him, because he loved doing his homework," his father, Kent Flowers Sr., said. "I mean, you couldn't ask for more than that. It was not a lot of hard work to get him to do what he had to do."Upon learning his girlfriend was having a baby, he recommitted himself to school, working toward graduating this coming semester, his family said. Flowers wanted to become a psychologist, his father said."Things were changing. He was becoming a man," said his cousin Shunna Hale. "He knew what he needed to do to provide for his family."Stokes was a chess champion who also was active in the high school drama club, Patch said. The eldest of three children, Stokes recently had been told he was in line for a promotion at the McDonald's in Lombard where he worked, his mother said.Those who knew the four young men said they cannot point to any reason that they might be targeted. Police said they had no information on whether they had gang ties.
But Patch said they all had pursued their studies vigorously and appeared to have no gang ties. Pritchett, for example, had one detention all last school year, Patch said. Pritchett's family declined to comment.
Flowers had been pressured by schoolmates, his father said, and struggled to figure out how to respond.Flowers Sr. said the neighborhood has seen violence before, largely because of drug-dealing spurred by people who view the nearby Eisenhower Expressway as an easy escape route. Both the Flowers and Stokes families said they pray to be able to forgive those who took the lives of their sons. As she spoke to visitors Sunday, Devin Stokes' mother kept her hand on his Bible, which she had found open to a reading from Colossians, including this passage:
"Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you."
Family members want to see changes in their village, even though it can't undo the shooting."Somebody knows who the perpetrator is. But nobody's saying nothing," Flowers Sr. said. "And everybody's going to keep their mouth shut. The same people keep doing the same thing over and over and over. Something has to be done."
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