Twenty-year-old Jason Harvey bought his mother her favorite meal for dinner on Mother's Day two years ago -- pork chops, sweet potatoes, collard greens, corn bread and macaroni and cheese.
That was the last meal they ate together.
The next morning, Jason Harvey was shot four times in broad daylight by a 16-year-old boy presumed to be a gang member.
Harvey is just another number in the statistics that make Chicago's murder rate the highest per capita among all US cities with populations of over 1 million.
Chicago, with a population of 2.9 million, recorded 646 murders last year and 666 in 2001. There have been 384 murders from Jan. 1 to Aug. 22 this year. New York, with two-and-a-half times the population, had fewer murders in each of the last two years, excluding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The number of murders in the US rose slightly last year, according to FBI figures. The US homicide rate is one of the highest among major industrial countries. The US has almost five times the population of Britain but nearly 10 times the homicides.
Just about everyone agrees on the reason for Chicago's high murder rate -- a mixture of gangs, guns and drugs. Gangs control the drug trade throughout the city.
"The biggest challenge Chicago faces is gangs," said police officer Tom Garritty as he patrolled one of Chicago's most crime-ridden neighborhoods in a police car.
More than 60,000 people in Chicago have admitted to being gang members, and more than 60 percent of the homicides are gang-related, according to the gangs unit at the state attorney's office.
Less than 5km from the shimmering Sears Tower in downtown Chicago is Pilsen, a neighborhood where gang members stroll past dilapidated buildings. A seven-year-old girl sitting on a porch was killed there in a drive-by shooting recently.
The letter "A" sprayed in bright green and circled on a pillar at South Blue Island Avenue and 16th Street means the area belongs to Ambrose, one of the two largest Hispanic gangs in the city. Anyone not a member of Ambrose who tries to sell drugs in the area is risking his or her life.
"The most common cause of homicide among gangs is turf," said Garritty.
He waved at two teenagers dressed in red, white and green, hanging out on a street corner. "They are Larazia members. Those are Larazia colors they are wearing," said officer Chris Kantor, also riding in the car. The situation is similar in some predominantly black neighborhoods where gangs called the Vice Lords and the Gangster Disciples guard their turf.
Jason Harvey, who had been arrested three times before he was murdered, and the boy who shot him fit the typical profile of murder victim and offender in Chicago -- young and black or Hispanic, with prior arrests.
In Chicago, 72 percent of homicide offenders and 74 percent of victims are black, and 20 percent of offenders and 18.1 percent of victims are Hispanic, according to police data for the first six months of this year.
Chicago's high murder rate has people apportioning blame and calling for action.
Police officers said the city needs more cops on the streets and tougher laws to apprehend loitering gang members. Also, the city should not have disbanded a special intelligence unit on gangs within the police department, said Brian Sexton of the gang prosecution unit in the state attorney's office.
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