ROBERT: EXECUTED AT 11
Peter Kendall and John W. Fountain, Tribune Staff Writers. Tribune reporters George Papajohn, Jerry Thomas and Byron White contributed to this storyCHICAGO TRIBUNE
Troubled and prone to crime. A victim and a victimizer. Just 11, Robert Sandifer was on the run, suspected in the slaying of a young neighbor. He was found Thursday in a pool of blood, believed to have been killed by his own gang.
Robert Sandifer's 11-year downward spiral of family neglect and juvenile delinquency finally ended Thursday in a pool of blood in a pedestrian tunnel on the South Side.
It was a descent that had accelerated viciously in the last week, sending a 6th grader on the lam, wanted for murder, only to be executed, police suspect, by the gang members whose lifestyle he embraced.
And so a South Side block that had lost one child this week lost another. And it consoled no one that the second child murdered was believed to have been the killer of the first.
For three days, police had searched for Robert, a diminutive 11-year-old believed to have committed two shootings Sunday night, killing his 14-year-old neighbor, Shavon Dean, and leaving another boy with a spinal cord injury.
When they found him, about 12:30 a.m., Robert was lying on dirt and bits of broken glass in the mouth of a pedestrian underpass emblazoned with gang graffiti. He had been shot twice in the back of the head, execution style.
Robert, who equally defied the supervision of his family and the state, but found structure in a street gang, is a social worker's warnings come to life. Harm the child, we have been admonished, and the child will return that harm to others.
In Robert's case, it is the speed of the turn-around that is so disheartening.
Even Shavon Dean's family found no solace in the death of the 11-year-old boy.
"It's just bad," said Charlene Jones, the girl's aunt. "Both of them are victims. That little boy was a victim too. My niece was just a victim of him being victimized."
Police began searching for Robert after witnesses told police they had seen him shoot one 16-year-old boy at about 6 p.m. Sunday, injuring his spinal cord. Other witnesses allegedly saw him unleash a volley of shots three hours later that killed Shavon and injured another boy in the hand, according to police sources.
Investigators theorize that the boy was murdered by his own gang because the shootings Sunday were done at the request of higher-ups whom he could implicate if captured, sources said. Late Thursday, police had made no arrests in the boy's killing.
Even Robert's family members, who do not accept that he killed Shavon, believe he was killed to be silenced about her death.
"He must have seen who did it and they didn't let him come home," said his great-aunt, Thenesia McGee, 25. "Then they must have tricked him and said they were going to let him come home, then shot him in the back of the head."
"Two kids, a block apart," she said.
The cold-bloodedness of executing a 4-feet 6-inch boy-who actually looked far younger than his 11 years-stunned even veteran police officers whose careers have focused on the ferocity of gangs.
"I've never seen it happen like this," said one gang investigator. "I've never heard of them snuffing out their own like this."
Police Supt. Matt Rodriguez said Robert's death should send a message about gangs.
"The organizations are very selfish," Rodriguez said. "Here's a perfect example of someone who apparently was doing the bidding for people in gangs and finds himself dead because he is expendable, apparently becoming a victim of the gang himself."
The search for Robert ended when someone called police to say that they had found a body in a tunnel beneath the South Shore Railroad tracks at 108th Street.
He was wearing a T-shirt with a cartoon character-the Tasmanian devil-printed on it.
Within two hours, police were at the home of Robert's grandmother, Jannie Fields. It was her house Robert had gone to in March after running away from a group home on Chicago's North Side.
They showed her a photo of the face of the body they had just discovered. She couldn't identify it. They showed it to his mother, Lorina Sandifer, who was also there. She said it was her son.
"I feel sorry for my son," she said Thursday. "I love him, but God loves him best."
Over three days, Fields had been cruising the neighborhood in her van, searching for Robert, just as the police were.
She said Robert had telephoned her Wednesday afternoon, saying he wanted to meet her at a nearby shopping plaza. But when she arrived, he wasn't there.
"I was fearful for his life," she said.
"That's why I wanted him to come home, now he can't come home anymore," she said. Her voice trailed off, she began to sob.
Earlier this week, Fields had said her grandson had a tattoo that read, "I love mommy." In fact, he had a gang tattoo-"BDN III," for Black Disciple Nation-on his right forearm, and a tattoo of a heart on his left shoulder. His mother, too, has a heart tattoo on her right arm.
Officially, authorities would not limit themselves to the theory that Robert was killed to be silenced.
According to one theory, members of the Black Disciple Nation had been harboring Robert while police searched the area, but that as the pressure intensified, he was executed.
"At this point in the investigation, we don't want to speculate as to why this young man was slain," Pullman Area Detective Cmdr. Earl Nevels said at a press conference Thursday morning. "We are looking to a series of theories."
He added, however, that they have "very positive leads."
"We do have someone that we are taking a very close look at," Nevels said.
Late Thursday, police were questioning several people, but called them witnesses, not suspects.
In the Roseland neighborhood where Robert and Shavon both lived, children shunned Robert, knowing him to be trouble. He had already been arrested at least eight times and convicted at least twice. He had also been raised in a deeply troubled home, where supervision was found to be inadequate for someone with Robert's behavioral problems, according to state records.
"He's a little boy, but he tried to rule his friends," said one 12-year-old girl who was neighbor of Robert's. "He was a bad boy."
But no 11-year-old is evil.
Just last week, he was all smiles and happiness as he played outside Van Vlissingen Elementary School, which he attended until last year. In fact, he told a favorite school staff member that he had a frog at home that he wanted to give to her as a present, according to the school's principal, Jacqueline Carothers.
On Thursday, people came to the tunnel where Robert was found.
One man walked into the tunnel, lit by rows of yellow lights on each side. "Who put the gun in that baby's hand?" he said angrily as his wife sat in their car, weeping. "That was a baby."
He said he didn't even know the boy.
On Thursday afternoon, Robert's family members draped their fence and porch with blue ribbons and attached two helium balloons. One balloon read, "I love you." The other read, "You're so special." There was also a yellow, white and blue teddy bear.
A poster bore his nickname, "Yummy," which he was given because of his love of cookies.
Around the corner, yellow ribbons were tied around Shavon Dean's porch. Just a few steps away, a memorial of flowers and banners had been erected at the spot where she had died.
Neighborhood children stopped by the memorial throughout the day Thursday.
"Where's she at?" asked Yazman Marshall, 7, who stood at Dean's memorial with her sisters.
"She's dead," explained Chaka Marshall, 10, Yazman's older sister. "She's gone. She went to heaven."
"Who killed her? Yummy?" Yazman asked.
"He's gone too," Chaka said.
"He's dead?"
There was no reply.
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