In early June, Tim King sat down at his computer and began to write a letter he didn’t want to write. King is the founder of Urban Prep Academies, which operates three all-boys charter schools in Chicago. Two days earlier, one of Urban Prep’s promising students, Christopher Fields, had been shot and killed.
Fields was a 17-year-old who liked watching Family Guy and playing Halo, according to his Facebook page. A boxer, he earned the nickname “Sandman” at competitions. At the conclusion of his sophomore year, he joined his classmates at the end-of-year assembly. “Hey, be safe, we want you to come back to us,” King remembers telling the young men. “It’s crazy out here in Chicago; we need you to take care of yourselves.”
Three nights later, Fields and his cousin were walking down a street near his house when a gunman opened fire, striking Fields in the back. The local news reported that he was hit while shielding his cousin. He died at the hospital less than an hour later.
King says he wanted the letter, which in various iterations would go to the Urban Prep families, staff and supporters, to strike a balance between informative and sensitive. He needed to be direct without compromising the police investigation, or intensifying the grief some recipients would surely be feeling. “Telling the facts, telling when it happened, telling how great the kid is — that’s the easy part,” King tells The Trace. “The difficult part is telling people to continue to believe, to continue to hope.”
The right words can be difficult to summon. “I feel, when these things happen, hopeless,” he says. “I’ve got to get over that.”
On that day in June, King began to type.
It is with a heavy heart that I’m writing to inform you that Urban Prep Englewood Campus sophomore Christopher Fields was shot and killed near his home in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the evening of Saturday, June 11th. Mr. Fields was not the intended target, but rather was the victim of a senseless act of violence.
