Three years ago, the 20-year-old man who was shot dead at the Howard CTA station on Tuesday afternoon made an appearance in the Chicago Sun-Times.
Then 17, Macksantino Webb was “just trying to survive a summer” as the city’s murder rate soared the paper said.
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Webb’s family had sent the teen to Rogers Park to get away from the violence in their South Side neighborhood that summer, according to the paper.
“My great-nephews started coming [to the North Side] about five years ago,” Rev. Zollie Webb of Evanston’s Friendship Baptist Church said in the profile.
Suffering a little homesickness, Macksantino and his cousin, Ernest, went back to Englewood one weekend and had a harrowing experience.
“Somebody just got to shooting out of nowhere…We’re taking cover under some bricks,” Macksantio told the paper. “Police came, like, 10 seconds later. Ernest had been shot in the head.”
“I didn’t know what to do. We were together since grammar school. We used to always be at his house every day after school.”
This wasn’t the first time the boys had been shot at. On Super Bowl Sunday, they were hanging out with friends and family when someone walked up and started shooting.
“There were a lot of girls on the porch,” says Macksantino’s brother, Cipriano Webb. “One got shot three times in the leg. Another girl got skinned. A boy got shot. And my cousin got shot in his stomach and both legs.
“It’s gotten worse this year,” the 16-year-old says. “It’s not just us stuff’s happening to. Everybody is in the same situation.”
One summer after the paper profiled Macksantino, prosecutors charged him with committing a robbery on the 6400 block of North Wayne in Rogers Park. The outcome of the case was not immediately available on Wednesday.
Police took at least one suspect into custody for questioning minutes after Macksantino died of multiple gunshot wounds on Tuesday. A firearm was also recovered. Charges have not yet been filed.
