News Stories on Murder of Soror Erika (XNO)

[Skee OuiZy]

Chicago School Teacher Killed On South Side

 

Chicago Public Schools teacher Erika Prince was killed June 1, 2008 in a drive-by shooting.

 

CBS CHICAGO (CBS) ―

A Chicago Public Schools teacher was shot and killed on the South Side Sunday night.

 

Erika Prince, 32, was shot in the head at 8745 S. Euclid Ave., according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's office.

 

Police are now calling this a homicide and saying little more than that. But family members say detectives told them this may be a case of mistaken identity, all because the teacher was sitting in a car identical to the one owned by the intended victim.

 

In addition to being a teacher, Prince was a loving mother. She was dedicated to her own children, and the students at Arthur Dixon Elementary School.

 

Prince worked in the Chatham neighborhood for the last six years. Her daughter attended Dixon Elementary, as well.

 

The principal sent a flyer home with students telling them beloved teacher died in a drive-by shooting.

 

Thirteen-year-old Aseante Armstrong was one of Prince's students. He said Prince helped shape his life.

 

"She was like my mother, she was like my second mother," he said.

 

"I just broke down and cried, 'cause I couldn't believe it. This lady, she was so nice. She was attentive. Every time Aseante needed anything, she was there," said Katrina White, Armstrong's mother.

 

"She helped me when I had problems. …. She was like my second mother," Armstrong said.

 

Armstrong was helping Prince install a cabinet in her home Saturday, just hours before she was found shot in the head in her car. 

 

Family members said Prince was on life support for about seven hours Sunday before relatives made the decision to take her off of it. Prince's co-workers spent several hours at the hospital hoping she would survive. Now they are preparing to say farewell.

 

"She loved life. She loved her kids. She loved the Dixon school family. And she was about peace…" said teacher assistant Iris Freeman, who taught with Prince.

 

Prince's family told CBS 2 she had gone to her children's great-grandmother's house after a family skating trip when she was gunned down on south Euclid Avenue. Signs in the neighborhood show residents want to stop violence on the streets.

 

 

"A loss like this, you know, the kids lost their mother, there are no words for it," said DeMarco Hughes, who had two children with Prince. They are 9 and 5 years old.

 

Their 9-year-old daughter is an honor student at the school where Prince taught 7th and 8th graders.

 

"All I could do was just shake my head. I just can't believe this. I mean it was like shock," said Dixon Elementary Principal Sharon Dale.

Dale said Prince dedicated her time to helping her students work out the problems of life, inside and outside the classroom.

 

Prince's former student Brandon Russell was already dealing with the shooting death of his cousin about three weeks ago when he was told violence also took his mentor, instructor and friend.

 

"It's not a feeling that you can explain when you've lost someone that is real close to you," Russell said. "We shared the same things she loved dance, I loved dance. She loved drama, I loved drama. She took me to church and got me saved and I was able to get a second chance with God through her."

 

Prince's church activity is one thing everyone CBS 2 talked to emphasized. Friends said she was a member of Salem Baptist Church.

Prince's friends and co-workers say she was happy and there were no signs of trouble at home.

 

As the family begins to make funeral arrangements the school is planning its own memorial service.

 

CBS 2's Pamela Jones and Dana Kozlov contributed to this report.

(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

 

-----------------------

Friends, family and school stunned by Chicago teacher's death

Woman found fatally shot in car near South Side home

By Karl Stampfl and Dan P. Blake | Tribune reporters

10:59 PM CDT, June 2, 2008

 

Chicago Public Schools teacher Erika Prince had been in-line skating with her two children and a niece―enjoying one of the warmest days of the year―before she was shot in her car on Chicago's South Side early Sunday.

She died later that day, an apparent victim of mistaken identity, said a Chicago police spokeswoman. The violent act shocked the school community, including her special-ed students at Dixon Elementary, and left her family struggling to understand why anyone would want the 32-year-old single mother dead.

Investigators are looking at whether the shooter may have been seeking someone in a vehicle similar to Prince's, the spokeswoman said.

"They didn't know who they were shooting at," said her father, Curtis Prince. He described his daughter as a religious woman who spent her time teaching and carting her children from activity to activity. "She didn't have any enemies."

Related links

 

Erika Prince and children Photo

Her sister agreed. "She didn't deserve this," said Carlas Prince Gilbert, a finance manager for Chicago Magazine, a Tribune Company publication. "She wasn't at a party or at a club or hanging around with crazy people."

One of her students, Brandon Russel, an 8th -grader, tried to put into words how he felt about Prince.

"She was everything to me," he said. "She took me to church and got me saved. She made me step up and make it to graduation."

The shooting occurred at about 12:15 a.m. Sunday in the 8700 block of South Euclid Avenue, where the great-grandmother of Prince's children resides. Prince had double parked her cranberry Dodge Charger so her 16-year-old niece and her two children, ages 9 and 5, could retrieve a few personal items for a sleepover at her home in the 7200 block of South Eberhart Avenue.

Authorities arrived to find her slumped over behind the wheel of her car, and Prince was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. She died at about 8:10 p.m. Sunday, a Cook County medical examiner office spokesman said.

Students and faculty at Dixon School, which is at 8306 S. St. Lawrence Avenue, were stunned by the news of Prince's death, herself an alumna of the school. A number of teachers hurried to the hospital Sunday when word of the shooting began to spread, said Principal Sharon Dale.

"I had to share [the news of her death] with my staff and that was very hard. The kids had heard about it, and they were emotional. She was that kind of teacher," Dale said.

After a Board of Education meeting on Monday, school's chief Arne Duncan appeared shocked when informed that a teacher was the latest victim of violence in Chicago.

"The easy availability of the guns is having deadly consequences. Whether it's [a] 7-year-old, whether it's teenagers or whether it's, today, a teacher who lost their lives to gun violence, we as a society accept a staggering rate of loss," Duncan said. "That to me is tragic and unacceptable."

Prince was also active at her church, Salem Baptist. Her daughter, Malani, a 4th grader at Dixon, was on the honor roll, Dale said.

Prince worshiped at Salem for the last decade.

Rev. Charlie Dates described her as able to "bring out the best" in others. She sang in a church choir and organized prayer networks among the church members age 22 to 35 years, he said.

"She had a passion for religion and connecting people," Dates said. She loved to change things too, he added, "by throwing velvet bricks."

Brandon, the 8th-grader, said he hesitated about attending next week's graduation ceremony after hearing of her death. Dale convinced him to reconsider.

"I'll do it because she would have wanted me to," he said.

Tribune reporter Carlos Sadovi contributed to this report.

ksta...@tribune.com

dpb...@tribune.com