Mourning in Chicago

I didn't know Jennifer Hudson, but I'm hurt and angry all the same.

The dark skies over Chicago matched the mood Monday on a day of unspeakable tragedy: The body of 7-year-old Julian King, the nephew of actress/singer Jennifer Hudson, had been discovered. He'd been missing since the slayings of his grandmother, Darnell Donerson, and uncle, Jason Hudson.

When I heard the news on the radio, I had just dropped off my own 7-year-old son at school and was headed to an appointment in downtown's busy Loop district. As the tears flowed, I clung to the belief—the blessing—that my own child was safe at school, or at least I hoped he was. Just a week ago, Julian's mother, Julia Balfour, was able to go to her job as a school bus driver with the same feeling of comfort that her baby was safe in the care of her own mother.

The Chicago radio station, which usually plays hip-hop and R&B, switched to an all-gospel format for several hours. I guess the music was meant to soothe, but it made me angry and, for a moment, made me question God.

I don't know Jennifer Hudson personally—only what I've read and heard about her. She seems like a lovely woman. Her name has appeared atop every news story about the tragedy because of her celebrity status. I couldn't help but ask God how he could let such a horror befall someone as God-fearing, church-going and down to earth as Hudson appears to be? If a person who had earned the respect of so many in her hometown and around the country could be struck by such a horrific tragedy, what does that mean for the rest of us sinners?

Since the tragedy, the media has made a big to do out of the community where the slayings took place—Englewood—reporting that Hudson had asked her mother to leave but her mother refused. Englewood has a reputation as one of the most dangerous communities in Chicago and is known for gang-banging, frequent gunfire, double-digit unemployment rates and a high incidence of mental illness. I don't go there often.

But Englewood didn't kill Darnell Donerson, Jason Hudson and Julian King. A person did—most likely a man who knew his victims well. And although police had not officially charged Hudson 's estranged brother-in-law, William Balfour, with the killings at this writing, in my mind, they've already inextricably linked him to the crime.

As gospel group Mary Mary's "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" blasted from my car stereo, my anger still deepened as I thought about Balfour and what he had possibly done. He was living with his pregnant girlfriend. Could he remain so vengeful toward his estranged wife that he would take away the person she loved most?

After my meeting, I drove down Michigan Avenue to the South Side. At 35th Street, I noticed television news trucks hogging the entrance to the police station, reporters no doubt camping out for updates about the slayings. I stopped by Church's Chicken across the street to grab some lunch, and a young girl who works there was peeling flyers displaying Julian's smiling face off the store's windows. At one point, she paused and laid one of the flyers on the counter and stared down at the boy's chubby little face, her own face twisted with sadness and disbelief.

She looked up at me and shook her head. "I know" is all my lips could say.

Eventually, the flyers with Julian's sweet face will come down or wither away against the light posts. One day, Jennifer Hudson and her relatives will laugh and smile again. One day. For now, the shrine of stuffed animals, flowers and cards continues to build outside Darnell Donerson's prized Englewood home, and a city mourns with Hudson, as blue skies give way to somber, gray clouds.

T. Shawn Taylor is a writer and restaurateur in Chicago.