Man shot, killed in Calumet Heights robbery attempt was aspiring graphic designer, family says

CHICAGO (WLS) -- A 20-year-old man was killed in a shooting during an attempted robbery in the parking lot of a gas station in the Calumet Heights neighborhood Monday morning, Chicago police said.

The shooting occurred at about 12:15 a.m. in the parking lot of a Shell gas station at 1650 E. 95th St., police said.

A witness told police that the victim was in his vehicle in the gas station parking lot when an unidentified man who was attempting to rob him fired shots.

The witness said the victim was shot as he was trying to get away in his vehicle. He ended up crashing into a tree. A passenger inside the vehicle was not injured.

Police said the victim was shot in the head and transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Family identified the man killed as Daemond Russell.

He was an aspiring graphic designer with his own fashion label, taking a year off from Clark Atlanta University and splitting time between his mom's house in Olympia Fields and his dad's house in Chicago.

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"He would smile, and you just would crumble if you saw him smiling, the most charming person I ever met. We talk every day," his mother Tatiana Jones said.

Jones said her son, affectionately referred to as "Taj," was her only child.

"My son is my best friend. Everybody that knows me knows how obsessed I am with him. So whoever did this just killed me," Jones said.

"Taj's" mother said he would have gotten up Monday morning to go to work at a plastics factory in University Park, a job he just started so he could pay for his car as he attended a local junior college.

"This is my only child. I don't have any more kids. I don't have any more children. Me and him talked about celebrating his 21st birthday; we talked about me being a grandma one day, and now all of that is gone because you wanted to rob him. He didn't have anything," Jones said.

Russell's former basketball coach at Gary Comer College Prep, Lawrence Jackson, called him a smooth operator, a young man with presence.

"The one thing that I'll always remember: He was a silent leader, like he didn't talk a lot, but he just had a group of people that followed him," Jackson said.

He was an easy young man to follow because, as his coach said, he had a plan.

"He talked a lot about what he wanted to do after high school. He was like this artist. His mind was just outside the box," Jackson said.

Area Two detectives are investigating, and no one is in custody.

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