CHICAGO (MCT) — Working the midnight shift, Chicago police Sgt. Darwin Butler, crime-scene tape in his hands, approached a white Chevrolet where a gunshot victim still sat. A supervising sergeant, he shined his flashlight on the young man and without a close look realized that another life had been lost.
He turned abruptly as a young woman nearby became hysterical, screaming, "That's my sister's boyfriend, Darius!"
A thought flashed through Butler's mind: "Oh, that's my stepson's name."
He looked again. The white Monte Carlo was just like the one his stepson owned. He went to the car again, and the realization crashed down on him -- the victim was the kid he had raised since he was 8 years old.
On Monday, Darius Parish, 20, a graduate of Whitney Young Magnet High School who studied at St. Xavier University to be a pharmacist was buried as his mother and stepfather looked on. At the funeral, the violent death of a promising young man prompted mourners to call for another re-examination of a badly torn society.
And the unlikely collision of the stepfather's job as a cop and the crime scene itself put a dramatic point on it.
"I was shocked. I couldn't believe it. I had to look at him again," Butler, his eyes watering during an interview at his Southwest Side home, said of that instant he realized that violence had struck so close to home.
Fourteen years ago, Butler himself was shot in the chest while on duty in West Englewood. Parish was on Thanksgiving break from college when he was shot in the left shoulder Nov. 27 as he drove his car. A friend was also shot in the arm, but three others in the car, including a 10-month-old baby, were uninjured.
No arrests have been made, and the circumstances surrounding his death weren't known.
Parish's girlfriend, Janell Jones, said she and Parish were watching TV at his house earlier that night but were on their way to go bowling when the shooting occurred about 1 a.m. Jones, 18, said she feels guilty because it was her idea to go bowling.
"We should have just stayed," said Jones, sitting in her South Side home and blankly staring downward at her kitchen table "This is going to haunt me for the rest of my life."
At the First Baptist Congregational Church on the Near West Side on Monday, several wreaths with blue and white carnations stood beside Parish's casket as about 200 relatives and friends slowly walked one-by-one to pay their final respects. Among them was a man who patted Parish's sport-coat sleeve before collapsing to the floor. He needed to be escorted away from the casket by Butler and other mourners.
Later, about 30 police officers formed two separate lines in the church to greet Butler with hugs and handshakes. A choir of some two dozen parishioners sang gospel music in between speakers who eulogized the loss.
The church's pastor, the Rev. George Daniels, called for the mourners to stand up against the violence that took the life of Parish, who, two days before his slaying, had interviewed with several ministers for a financial scholarship awarded by the church.
"We as a people of faith have not stood up," Daniels shouted into a microphone. "We have to stand as a church. Mothers have to stand."
The night of the shooting was a typical midnight shift for Butler, who is assigned to the Englewood and West Englewood neighborhoods, the most crime-ridden in the city. He had just wrapped up at a crime scene at 71st Street and Wolcott Avenue, where a "shots fired" call led to the recovery of guns by his officers.
Then a call came over the police radio of more gunfire about a mile away near 62nd Street and Damen Avenue. Only this time a person was actually shot. Butler raced toward the area in his squad car, its blue lights flashing and siren blaring. He arrived there within two minutes to see a little more than a dozen onlookers being ushered away by officers from the damaged Monte Carlo.
Butler approached the crime scene no differently than scores of others throughout his 17 years on the force. He parked his squad car down the block, brought along some red and yellow crime tape and walked calmly toward the front of the car, which had struck a tree. With the crime scene already partially taped up, Butler stepped to the car's front passenger's side door to check for any signs of life from the victim.
He shined his flashlight briefly on the victim's face — a young African-American man with a bullet wound in his shoulder — but found he was unresponsive.
"I never looked at the person to be anyone that I knew because I see (gunshot victims) so often working the streets like that," Butler said seated in his kitchen, his hands clasped together and resting on a table. "And my first thought was, 'Wow. Another person potentially lost their life.'"
Once he realized the victim was his stepson, Butler told another sergeant, and he was driven from the scene immediately.
"I was done at that point. ... Had there not been another supervisor at the scene, I'm sure I could've held it together until another supervisor was summoned. (But) at that point, I was done," Butler said.
Parish had been sitting next to Jones, his girlfriend. Her twin sister, Shanell, their family friend and the friend's 10-month-old daughter were all in the back seat. Parish and his girlfriend met last summer while doing landscape work for the Chicago Park District. They had been dating for almost the last three months.
Other than "his smile and his voice," Janell Jones said, she will most miss Parish's generosity to others.
"The things he'd do for people. He was always ... there for everybody," Jones said. "If they needed a ride home, if they needed to borrow some money, anything, Darius would always give it to them."
Butler had married Parish's mother, Tanya, when his stepson was 8. In addition to his own three children from a prior relationship, Butler said he helped raise young Darius, watching him become a man. The two lived together for more than 10 years, sharing the home with his wife and their biological daughter, Joclyn. Parish was good at math and science and had an analytical mind, Butler said.
"He was a really smart kid," he said.
The sergeant has taken time off work since the fatal shooting. But the prospect of eventually having to drive by the site of Parish's death during patrol runs, he said, will make him strive only harder.
"I'm going to keep fighting. I'm going to keep trying to make a difference," he said. "I mean, yeah, you've just got to keep going. There's a lot of concerned people out here who live in Englewood and other communities who are at a disadvantage that don't want the violence."
Tribune reporter Ryan Haggerty contributed.
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