SPORTS
Part IV: Lito's Weapon
(This is the fourth in a 6-part series following the exploits of the eight teams in the Holstein Park adult basketball league. Part V: The Old Fockers Go Down will appear next week.)
Moses Seda, 20, the young spark plug on Lito’s Weapon, was alone in the Holstein Park gym cleaning up for the adult league games when I found him.
In my first couple weeks at the field house, I’d taken Moses to be another of the gym rats. As we spoke more, I learned I was wrong. Moses works mornings as an auto parts clerk at Pep Boys, afternoons as a recreation director at the park, and when he’s not playing basketball, he can be found at night in church rehearsing for a play or home practicing with his rap group Wodey Click.
The basketball, the church play and the rap group are all things he would have been doing this year with his cousin Lito -- except Lito is dead, shot multiple times in the chest last November in what police describe as a “gang-related” incident.
So when Moses talks about his rap group, he says he is dedicating its next album to FUBU (which was Lito’s rap name); and when he talks about his team, Lito’s Weapon, he notes that everyone on the team has dedicated this season to finding Lito’s killer because he and everyone else on the team – Alan, Brian, Country and Q – know “Lito wasn’t no gangbanger. You check around,” Moses says, “Lito was straight. Everyone liked Lito.”
According to the police report, that may have been the problem. In the long and involved story of gangs and Holstein Park, the gangs have been on the losing end of a 10-year gentrification process for some time now, but Moses knows it hasn’t always been that way.
Shortly after he was born, Moses' father was killed in a gang shooting and he was left with a grandmother, who raised him up to avoid the gangs. “She won’t have any part of it,” he says. “But you know how it is. You grow up here, you know who’s doing what. You may not be in a gang, but you know who the gangbangers are. They’re the kids you grew up and went to school with. You can’t avoid them.”
Ten years ago, the Latin Kings and Spanish Lords fought a turf war for control of the Holstein Park neighborhood that is recounted in a book titled My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King (2000 Chicago Review Press) by Reymundo Sanchez (a pseudonym.) Although all the names have been changed, many of the neighborhood kids claim to know at someone in the book and can provide a block-by-block accounting of which gangs still hang out in which local parks.
In the last few years, gang activity has been pushed further south and west of Holstein Park. An influx of wealthy young white professionals, an active community group and new neighborhood policing techniques (like the alderman’s decision to take down the outdoor basketball hoops near a drug-dealing corner) have reduced gang-related shootings by more than 50% this year. So the shooting of Anthony “Lito” Velez, 20, stands out, if only because it's one of only a handful in the last year.
Velez had been a standout baseball player at Amundsen High School who, having graduated in June, was enrolled to start college in January. He had no criminal record. “He was one of the good guys,” one policeman said. But that wasn’t necessarily the case with the friends he hung out with, one of whom has a long record of juvenile gang-related arrests.
According to the police report, at 8:50 PM on the night of November 17, Velez and his three friends were walking to their car on Dickens Street when a black Lexus SUV approached them. The occupants rolled down a rear window and words were exchanged. The friends fled. Lito did not. Shots were fired. Lito sustained multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. By the time police got him to St. Elizabeth’s hospital at 9:25 PM, he was pronounced dead. Four unknown male Hispanics in dark clothing were being sought.
A few days after the shooting, there was a funeral service for Lito at God’s Army Church on Kedzie and Chicago. Moses was right, everyone in the neighborhood knew Lito. Almost 600 people turned out.
But no one came forward with any new information on the shooting. One of the neighbors said it might have been a green GM Jimmy. Another heard an engine backfire, but couldn’t say where it came from. Of Lito’s three companions the night of the shooting, one suddenly felt the need to go to Arizona; another said he was inside with his mother; the third said he ran before the shots.
“You know how the gangs get jealous of the guys who can get out?” Mo speculates. “That was Lito. He was on his way to college. He’d made it. These gangs around here didn’t like that so -- you know how it is -- it’s 15-16 year olds doing what other people tell them to do. Somebody said kill Lito. So they did.”
It would be another couple days before I could get back to the park to see Lito’s Weapon play Papa’s Moustache. In the meantime, I’d gone over to the Shakespeare Avenue police district and spoke with the detective investigating the murder.
Lt. Mark Hawkins, the head of detectives for Area 5, said police have sifted through a number of leads, but they've reached a point where they need help from the community to solve the shooting. Because Velez had so many friends, they believe there’s talk about the crime in the community that they are not hearing.
“It’s the same as 90% of the murders we see. We know who the victims are and, in most cases, we know who the shooters are. What we need is a witness. Someone who’ll step forward and say ‘I saw it’,” Hawkins said.
In the gym, the game is delayed while Teddy Harris of Papa’s Moustache tries to round up enough of a team not to forfeit. At the scorer’s table, Moses is clowning with some of the gym rats. He’s pumped because just today a New York record company named Desert Storm has asked for a copy of his rap group’s CD.
Moses has decided, with all the questions I’m asking, I must be writing a book. When it is published, he wants to make sure I’ve got the details on the rap group (which is sure to be well known by then) so he takes pains to explain the terms. "We’re on the FUBU Ill State Records label,” he says. “FUBU, that’s my cousin and Ill – that’s like Illinois, but on the street it means raw, you know, like bad.
"And we call the group Wodey Click because—“ Moses notices me writing furiously in my notebook. "Wodey, that’s W-O-D-E-Y. You know, like when someone says ‘What’s up homey?’ Wodey’s the same thing. ‘What’s up Wodey?’ Wodey is like homey, so we’re a Wodey click. ”
I ask him if that’s spelled C-L-I-Q-U-E. He hadn’t thought of it that way, but Moses likes it. “That’s rad, maybe we can change it,” he says. “Our group is going to New York next month to play it for Desert Storm. They’re like phat in rap, so then we want to take it to California, and all around.”
I tell Moses that I stopped by police headquarters. He doesn’t immediately respond. I pass along Lt. Hawkins' request for more cooperation and tell Moses, as Hawkins told me, the police think there’s talk about the crime in the neighborhood they’re not hearing.
“There’s more to it than that,” Moses says slowly. “Our family, we know Lito was no gangbanger. But we’re going find who did it, You hear me? We’re going to find who did it. ”
“And we still honor Lito’s memory,” he adds. “Every Sunday, we go out to the cemetery to stand at the graveside. Last week, there were maybe 40 of us, mostly family, but his friends too, you know. Somebody will maybe t say some words about Lito . . . or there’s a prayer . . . and we’ll all hold hands. It’s our way of saying we won’t forget.”
When Teddy’s efforts to turn up a third player for Papa’s Moustache fails, Adrian, the park recreation director, spies Cyrus hanging nearby and suggests he be given a special exemption to play. For Cyrus this is like being asked to join the Bulls for the night because Ben Gordon has the flu.
Even with Cyrus on the court, Lito’s weapon has four players on the floor against Papa’s Moustache’s three and jumps out to a lopsided lead. But with all his friends watching, Cyrus could not be happier running up and down the court with the big men. By game’s end, he personally has put in 41 points in a 124-95 point loss.
For Cyrus, this is a whole season in a single game and, even in that one game, maybe a whole season in a single play. It comes late in the second half when Cyrus, only 5’4”, drives recklessly into the lane between the two 6’4” defenders, Brian and Alan.
He uses every move he’s got to slip between the defenders -- the crossover dribble, the behind the back spin and, finally, his under the basket reverse lay-up (with eyes closed and fingers crossed.) It circles the rim twice and falls in.
As he runs back on defense, Cyrus is beaming ear-to-ear with that pizza slice grin. It is a joy to behold. The joy of basketball.
To Be Continued
Did you miss Part I: A Season for All Reasons or Part II: The Gym Rats or Part III: The Grudge Match?
