In May of 2016, Leo Betancourt was shot to death while riding in the back of an SUV on Ashland Avenue in Back of the Yards. Over the next couple days, we met with his family. They walked from their home to his school to view remembrances written by his classmates. The notes and drawing adorned walls of the hallway outside classrooms in the upstairs of the school. Leo’s older sister Karina was our main contact. She had a son of her own.
This was one of many times where we stumbled into something so real I didn’t quite know how we arrived there. I know how we arranged for access, the promises made. I know those particulars. But what sequence of events to lead to this hallway? How many shootings, how many dozens we’d covered within a few blocks? And the community meetings and door knocks and beat work. Then to stand in this quiet hallway, trying to watch without our presence interfering. Confronted with some quiet, or some real, deeply personal and intimate moment. These kids, grieving a classmate. It was dizzying, then and now.
Part of the job is just being on guard so when it happens you can be professional, lock it down, put your face on, however you want to call it. Look away, squeeze your eyes shut, block the forming of tears. And I could see the adults holding it back too. Kids were grieving a classmate. The notes written to Leo were truthful the way kids can be without the pretense or fears of adulthood.
I remember sitting in a horseshoe arrangement of desks at the Breaking News Center listening to scanners and writing and looking through photos to check my own memory. Reading and rereading. Replaying the scenes in the hallway and trying to get it right. Never equal to the task. Just try to say as plain as possible and hope it lands.
The story went out. I moved onto other work. A lot in the neighborhood, working back on earlier shootings and following new ones. That summer someone shot himself, then was charged with Betancourt’s murder.
About nine years after that. Summer 2016 until now. Robert Morales pleaded guilty to driving the van used in the shooting. Other charges were dropped. He was sentenced to 27 years.
In court, Karina read an essay she wrote. She’d been looking forward to closure, an end to all this. Their mother had long exhausted her own capacity to sit through these hearings. Karina’s family, the deputies, the lawyers, and Morales were just about the only people in court.
She didn’t read the last paragraph of her essay; she said officials at 26th Street wouldn’t let her. “They told me just no swear words and I feel like I did comply with all their restrictions,” she said. The two versions – the one in court, the one I’m sharing below – aren’t at odds. Neither less true. Just different portraits of grief.
History here and here. Recent coverage here. Karina’s essay is below.
Our paths crossed on May 2nd 2016, the day you and your friends went down riding in your car looking for trouble, My brother was at the park playing with his friends when one his friends asked my brother if he wanted a ride back to his house, my brother accepted that ride not knowing who was driving that car.. it wasnt long before you shot the car up that my brother passed, I ask god why brother! Why not those who you were looking for!? Why my brother why the innocent!? you know you and yours shot my 13 year old brother at 6:34pm and he passed at 7:34pm just an hour after! With no one by his side! Not even the friend he was riding in the car that afternoon! Not his mother’s eyes near or her voice to tell him , he was going to be okay!!! It kills me to know he died by himself. His heart stopped beating next to strangers. I will never forgive you for that!!
Everytime I heard a shooting outside I would quickly go out looking for my little brothers to make sure they were okay and bring them home, but that Monday that I went out looking for Leo and I ! I couldn’t find him. That killed my soul!!we got a call from a friend saying my brother Leo had been shot but I couldn’t believe it! We went out looking for him, first to the crime scene, the back window was gone. I didn’t recognize the car from anyone we knew so that made me doubt that it could be Leo, after leaving the crime scene my mom my brother and me decided to go to his best friend’s house, his mom opened the door, I quickly asked her if Leo was there and she said no..she said surprisingly Leo isn’t here today, he’s always here but not today, I left got into the car back with my mom and we decided to split up to look for Leo. She would drop me off at the park and she would go home to check the house maybe Leo was home, still doubting MY LITTLE BROTHER HAD BEEN SHOT!!, I didn’t find him at the park, I saw my mom driving back to pick me up so we could go to the hospital and check if the kid that had been shot was my brother! We had no choice, we got to the emergency entrance and I told my mom to go in, I told her don’t worry I’ll park the car, As I was entering the parking garage I looked at the clock! It was 7:34!!! I parked the car and made my way fast into the hospital and we waited! Waited and waited! Finally after a long wait 2 doctors approached us asking if we were Leo’s family!? We said yes and they took us into a room, the doctor was having a hard time talking, it looked like she wanted to cry, but she had to break the new to us, she said I’m sorry we did everything that we could but we couldn’t save him.. he’s dead!! I HAD TO TRANSLATE THAT TO MY MOTHER!! I quickly asked her how did she know it was Leo, she doesn’t know him! She gave us a description, my mom said that the of color clothes shoes and phone coincidentally matched what he was wearing that day! Even then I doubted, I was holding on to my faith.. then it was time to call my dad and ask him to head out to the hospital, he asked if everything was okay and he asked if his boys were okay, I couldn’t say anything! when he got to the hospital no one volunteered to break the news to him!! I had to tell him his little boy was dead and we had to wait more hours to completely identify the body! He was devastated! I saw my parents heart break that day! I saw how it looked like to have your heart broken and continue to breath! You didn’t just shoot my brother’s heart out that day, you shot a mother’s heart a father’s,brother’s and a sister’s even my 7 year old son’s! We were hearing some people saying it was Leo and others that it wasn’t him! I didn’t believe it was my brother! He wasn’t a trouble maker or a gangbanger! He was a very smart boy, always on the honor roll. If he wasn’t reading books he was out playing basket ball or soccer with his friends.
I hope that after today me and my family can have some sort of closure knowing there will be some kind of “justice”. 27 years is a joke to my little brother’s bleeding heart, I will never be able to see his smile, hear his voice or give him a hug.. I remember the last time I hugged him he was crying outside of the laundromat over me and my brother picking at him! I was so sorry and hugged him so tight not knowing that be the last time! He was my baby too! I remember the day my parents brought him home from the hospital when he was born, I remember telling my kindergarten teacher I had a baby brother, she told me that if you read books to them when they were tiny little babies they would grow up to be really smart! I went home that night and read my little brother a Winnie the Pooh baby book! And 13 years later guess what!? He was one of the smartest little boys in his class! He had all A’s and B’s, he loved reading diary of the wimpy kid and war stories, I have his unfinished books at home, I won’t dare to even read them..
My wish for you is for your mother to bury an innocent child, for you to loose your child the same way my mother lost hers* for you to have your brother murdered the same way I lost MY LITTLE BROTHER! When your mother has cried my mothers tears,When you and your family have gone thru the same hell you have made my family go thru. Only then can you and yours try to look at me in the face and tell me your innocent, the words that have already been said can never be erased from my memory. I don’t care what kinda crappy life your mother gave you to become what you have, I hope she is ashamed of you, today the law has to teach you a lesson, the way your mother never did! I ask for you and your family to stay away from my family!! Have some respect!!
Victim impact statement by Karina Betancourt Leonardo Betancourt’s sister