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Vol. 31 No. 16
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Grant opportunities opening up for West Side businesses,
April 12, 2017
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PAGE 8
Also serving Garfield Park
The anatomy of a daylight shooting in Austin
In the middle of a ‘Street Beat’ interview, gunshots rang out By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
At around 1:25 p.m. on April 7, inside of Corcoran Grocery, on the corner of Central Avenue and West Corcoran Place, a native West Sider was asked about his experience growing up in Austin. “I’ve been here all of my life,” he said. “I grew up here.” Was he proud of being from the West Side? “Yeah. I’ve made it here all my life,” he said. “This is all I know. I moved away and wound up coming back. Back to my roots.” As this conversation was happening, a young, African American man who appeared to be in his 20s came inside of the store, shopped for a few minutes and left out, music from portable speakers blaring in his wake. How has the neighborhood changed over time?
WILLIAM CAMARGO/Staff Photographer
DEATH COMES IN THE AFTERNOON: Bystanders gather near the scene of a murder in Austin on April 7. One man was killed and several bystanders were wounded when the occupants of a gray or white vehicle drove by Corcoran Grocery and began shooting in the middle of the day. “It’s changed a lot,” the older man said. “Different things done changed. I was here before cell phones and computers and cameras and all that stuff. Social media changed the whole area.” The man didn’t appear entirely comfortable with this random moment of introspection. He had been thrown off by the request for an interview, which started with President Trump, about whom, the man said, he didn’t have an opinion. So he was asked to talk about life on the West Side. Although uncomfortable, he labored for a language to articulate his home and what it means to be born and to live in Austin. To live through it.
He wanted to have the words and seemed to be fighting to lift his thoughts above the gravity of the mundane — an elderly black woman sitting by a window, near an ice cream freezer, waiting on someone to ask her to scoop out a serving; the infectious bump of the rapper and producer Future decibels away, just outside of Corcoran’s concrete walls. What made him return home after having left so many years ago? Before the Austin native could answer, a barrage of bullets assaulted the senses. At least a dozen rounds were fired in quick, random succession, like kernels popping. Within microseconds, bodies inside of the store were crouched, shaking, prostrate,
standing paralytic. Several seconds later, the piercing sound stopped and, after a moment of silence, someone near the store’s entrance asked, “Am I shot?” “If you was shot, you wouldn’t be walking!?” said someone else, before a voice further in the distance, just a few feet south of Corcoran, yelled, “B.J. shot! “Who?!” “B.J.!” “S—t! No! No! No!” “He dead.” A crowd of at least a dozen people gathered around the 20-something-year old who had not long ago walked out of Corcoran, See DAYLIGHT SHOOTING on page 4
Austin Chamber of Commerce on the move... 773.854.5848 • www.austinchicagochamber.com