Arshell Dennis, 19-year old journalism student, was gunned down on the steps of his mother's home in what police are saying was an arbitrary killing. Dennis reportedly was there to surprise his sick mother on her birthday. (Reuters) 
 
 Arshell “Trey” Dennis, the third of his name, moved to New York to escape the home he loved. 
 
 He grew up in the South Side of Chicago, a city that employs his father as a police officer but has also profiled the 19-year-old because of the color of his skin. It’s a city seemingly constantly in turmoil — bleeding each weekend from dozens of gun-related killings — and an environment Dennis said he felt thankful to leave. 
 
 “I do appreciate that I am where I am,” he told his college roommate in a video interview last year. “A lot of people where I’m from don’t make it out.” 
 
 The teen had plans: to graduate from St. John’s University in New York City and become a writer, to channel what he’d learned about poetry and struggle into words that might make something shift. He couldn’t change the world — he said for that he’d need two lifetimes — but Dennis felt his path, where he came from and what he knew, might be able to “influence.” 
 
 “If you don’t know me,” he said in the video, “you gonna know me.” 
 
 19-year-old killed in Chicago once thought he'd escaped the city's cycle of violence: https://t.co/iBqMBqN9nn pic.twitter.com/C1P1Ng0Rrb — CBS News (@CBSNews) August 15, 2016 
 
 Just weeks from entering his junior year at St. John’s, the aspiring journalist and past NAACP student chapter vice president flew back home to Chicago for the weekend, WGN TV reported, a surprise for his sick mother’s birthday. 
 
 He sat on the porch of his family’s home Saturday night, talking with a hometown friend, when gunfire split the stillness of his ordinarily quiet Wrightwood neighborhood. 
 
 Both were shot. 
 
 The friend, 20 years old, was hospitalized. 
 
 Dennis died. 
 
 His mother’s screams echoed down the block. 
 
 “You do not want to hear a mother’s cry for her son,” a neighbor, who would only identify herself as Brenda, told the Chicago Tribune. 
 
 Arshell 'Trey' Dennis III, CPD officer's son, killed in front of family home in Wrightwood. https://t.co/4QdpqdayYc pic.twitter.com/1qyZIYoUEM — Chicago Homicide (@ChicagoHomicide) August 14, 2016 
 
 As of late Monday night, there had been no arrest, and authorities said the investigation was still open and active. 
 
 In a news conference Monday afternoon, Chicago Police Department Superintendent Eddie Johnson said authorities were treating the shooting as a case of “mistaken identity.” 
 
 “Arshell was a good kid, making his parents proud and studying for a promising future,” Johnson said in a statement. 
 
 The superintendent, who worked with Dennis’s father, Officer Arshell “Chico” Dennis, in the 1990s, visited the family Sunday and said in the statement he was “at a loss for words for the amount of grief” they are experiencing. 
 
 Though it’s well known in the neighborhood that the elder Dennis, a Drug Enforcement Administration task force officer, worked for the Chicago Police Department, the superintendent said there is “absolutely no credibility” to the theory that Arshell was targeted because of his father’s occupation. 
 
 Superintendent says Arshell Dennis, son of CPD officer was not targeted bc his Dad was a police officer. — Anthony Guglielmi (@AJGuglielmi) August 15, 2016 
 
 The two young men had no criminal records or personal histories of gang involvement, a police spokesman told the Chicago Tribune, but the shooting could still be gang-related. Some gangs have been conducting initiations, a police official told the Chicago Sun-Times, where recruits are instructed to shoot and kill whomever they find. 
 
 “That’s a rite of passage for them,” Johnson told CBS News. “Now how bizarre is that?” 
 
 On Sunday, the day Dennis was to return to New York, his loved ones scrubbed his blood from their sidewalk instead. 
 
 “The loss of our son is stunning and painful,” the Dennis family said in a statement to the Sun-Times. “Tragically, we were going to take him to the airport today at 3 p.m. to return to school. Now because of this senseless violence, we will be grieving and planning his funeral. Trey was smart, funny, and the light of our lives.” 
 
 Dennis graduated from Urban Prep Academy in 2014, where he ran cross country, played chess and participated in the Louder Than a Bomb poetry competition, according to his LinkedIn page. He also belonged to a preparatory program called Upward Bound. It was from a student in the program that director Gerald Smith heard the tragic news. 
 
 “I got the phone call, and my heart just fell to my stomach,” Smith told the Tribune. “So, so unexpected. … I’m still in disbelief.” 
 
 Last summer, Dennis returned to Chicago to work as an Upward Bound ambassador, Smith said. 
 
 “He was one of my better students, he really was,” Smith said. “Arshell was a fun time. He was real easygoing, real quiet, laid-back, mild-mannered — he wasn’t a problem at all. It’s a tragic loss.” 
 
 One of my former students was murdered this weekend in #Chicago gun violence. I'm horrified, saddened, and sickened. #ArshellDennis — (((brad keil))) (@clompthestrong) August 15, 2016 
 
 Terri Bachstrom, a neighbor and lunchroom attendant in Chicago Public Schools, told the Sun-Times Dennis was a well-mannered, quiet kid. 
 
 “He wasn’t in a gang. He wasn’t affiliated with any of the nonsense that’s going on in Chicago,” Bachstrom said. “He wasn’t one of those kids.” 
 
 Johnson said at the news conference Monday that to date in 2016, 85 percent of gunshot victims have had prior contact with police. Dennis and his friend were the exception, and yet this weekend, the two became part of the city’s growing violence statistics. In the same weekend Dennis died, nine people were killed and 31 more wounded in shootings across Chicago. 
 
 Since Jan. 1, 2,607 people have been shot in the city, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis, on pace to far exceed the number of shootings last year, which totaled 2,988. 
 
 It’s the kind of violence that Dennis used to discuss at St. John’s with his freshman-year roommate, 20-year-old Kyle DePina of Boston, reported the Sun-Times. 
 
 “It’s crazy,” DePina told the newspaper. “You never think it will happen to someone you’re close to until it happens.” 
 
 It was DePina who recorded Dennis in the 8-minute interview posted to YouTube in April 2015. They talk about police brutality and racial stereotypes. DePina asks his friend about his goals, what he wants to do, who he wants to be. 
 
 “I do think that I’ll be able to influence a lot the way people think,” Dennis said. “And give them an outlook on the things I’ve been through, and things that people where I come from go through, and just help them get through the struggles that they go through.” 
 
 That potential was universally mourned over the weekend. 
 
 “He was a promising child,” Brenda, the neighbor, told the Sun-Times. “He was going somewhere.” ||||| The 19-year-old son of a Chicago police officer was shot and killed Sunday morning, hours before he was due to return to college in New York, police and family members said. 
 
 The shooting took place in the Wrightwood neighborhood on the Southwest Side just after midnight, according to police. 
 
 Neighbors in the 2900 block of West 82nd Street reported hearing several gunshots. Police arrived to find 19-year-old Arshell Dennis and another man, age 20, wounded by gunfire. 
 
 Dennis and a hometown friend were hanging out on the front porch of a residence when a gunman approached, possibly from a vehicle, and opened fire, police officials said. 
 
 Dennis was hit in the chest and taken to Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park, where he was pronounced dead less than an hour after he was shot, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. 
 
 The 20-year-old man was shot in the arm and side. He was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in serious condition. 
 
 College student Arshell Dennis III, 19, a junior at St. John's University in New York, came home for a visit and was fatally shot early on Aug. 14, 2016, in the 2900 block of West 82nd Street. Dennis was the son of a Chicago police officer. 
 
 Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed that Dennis' father is a Chicago police officer. Officer Arshell "Chico" Dennis and Superintendent Eddie Johnson once worked together as patrol officers in the Gresham District, Guglielmi said. 
 
 "Officer Dennis dedicated his life to make this city safer, and his son Arshell was a good kid, making his parents proud and studying for a promising future as a journalist," Johnson said in a statement. "As always, the men and women of the CPD will stop at nothing to find who was responsible and bring a sense of closure and justice to Officer Dennis and all families affected by violence. 
 
 "But in order to address the root of this violence, we must change the way the criminal justice system treats the reckless, repeat gun offenders who are causing this violence and send a clear message that when you are involved in gun crimes you will be held accountable." 
 
 Dennis’ slaying added to the mounting violence this year. As of Thursday, 436 people had been slain in the city and 2,534 had been wounded by gunfire, according to a Tribune analysis. 
 
 The younger Dennis, whom relatives called "Trey," was a student at St. John's University in New York City, according to his grandfather. 
 
 The teenager was about to start his junior year as a journalism major at St. John's, relatives said. He arrived in town Thursday to see his mother before starting the school year and was planning to leave for New York on Sunday afternoon. 
 
 "He was a beautiful young man, full of laughs and always teasing us," said his grandfather, also named Arshell Dennis. "It's a deep loss, and it hurts. I wish this senseless killing would stop." 
 
 Dennis' death is being investigated as a case of mistaken identity, based on what detectives know about Dennis' family, about that block and about the neighborhood, according to Guglielmi. 
 
 Family photo Arshell Dennis III, 19, of Chicago. Dennis, a junior at St. John's University in New York and the son of a Chicago police officer, was fatally shot Aug. 14, 2016, along the 2900 block of West 82nd Street. Arshell Dennis III, 19, of Chicago. Dennis, a junior at St. John's University in New York and the son of a Chicago police officer, was fatally shot Aug. 14, 2016, along the 2900 block of West 82nd Street. (Family photo) (Family photo) 
 
 "There was nothing in the victim's history that would suggest he is involved or associated in gangs, and he had no criminal record. Neither of the victims have criminal history or gang history or history with the CPD," Guglielmi said. 
 
 Additionally, Dennis' father was known to everyone on the block as a Chicago police officer. A motive or any idea of who the assailant was trying to target remained unclear, Guglielmi said, adding that there was nothing to suggest anyone else was with Dennis and his friend when the shooting happened. It was not known if Officer Dennis was at work or home at the time of the incident. 
 
 Detectives are canvassing the area, looking for video surveillance that could have captured the shooting. There is no description yet on the gunman, but authorities will be speaking to the 20-year-old friend who remains hospitalized. No arrests have been made. 
 
 "Hopefully within the next few hours there will be leads in the case," Guglielmi said Sunday afternoon. 
 
 About a half-mile away, Denzell Mickel was shot multiple times Aug. 8 while driving a Lexus near 83rd Place and Kedzie Avenue before running off the road into a nearby yard. Guglielmi said it was too soon to say if Mickel's death had any connection to Dennis' slaying. 
 
 As a high school student, Dennis belonged to a college preparatory program called Upward Bound, according to director Gerald Smith. Last summer, he came back to work for Upward Bound as an ambassador. 
 
 A look at the scenes of violence in Chicago on the weekend of Aug. 13-14, 2016. 
 
 "He was one of my better students, he really was," Smith said. "Arshell was a fun time. He was real easygoing, real quiet, laid back, mild-mannered — he wasn't a problem at all. It's a tragic loss." 
 
 Smith said it was Upward Bound students who reached out to him Sunday morning to tell him about Dennis' death. 
 
 "I got the phone call, and my heart just fell to my stomach," he said. "So, so unexpected. … I'm still in disbelief." 
 
 Neighbors, whether they've lived on the block for decades or only a few years, said they were shocked by the violence. 
 
 Gloria Samaniego said the neighborhood has escaped violence for the 38 years she has lived in her home. Sunday morning she was returning from her shift at Rush University Medical Center, where she had spent the day watching the aftermath of gun violence unfold. 
 
 "I thought, 'Oh, my God, another shooting,'" she said. "Then I came home ... and someone had died two doors down." 
 
 Pat Williams, who also lives on the same block as the Dennis family, said she had specifically chosen the neighborhood for its safety and community. She said she heard six shots from her gangway, then watched as dozens of officers and first responders swarmed the sidewalks and front yards of her neighborhood. 
 
 "The reason we moved here was to get away from the hustle and bustle and the violence," Williams said. "I'm just confused. I'm hoping it's an isolated thing. I hope there's not more other violence." 
 
 Carol, who lives at the end of the block and asked to be identified only by her first name, said she heard eight or nine gunshots. 
 
 When she called 911, she was told that 10 or 20 others had reported the gunfire. 
 
 "They had gotten an enormous amount of calls," she said. 
 
 She looked out her window to see blue flashing lights and someone lying on the ground. 
 
 The neighborhood is tight-knit, she said. The lawns are kept neat, and the block club is active. Carol heard the bad news from the person above her on the neighborhood phone tree: The son of their neighbor, just home from college, had been shot dead, she was told. 
 
 "I'm so tired of this," she said. "I'm so tired of hearing about our kids getting killed, shot." 
 
 Another neighbor, who would only identify herself as Brenda, said she also heard the shots, followed by the sound of Dennis' mother. ||||| Was Chicago cop’s son killed as part of gang initiation? 
 
 The investigation into the shooting of two men, including the son of a Chicago Police officer, continued Sunday afternoon. | Jacob Wittich/Sun-Times 
 
 Chicago Police are investigating whether an officer’s 19-year-old son was shot and killed over the weekend as part of a gang initiation. 
 
 Some gangs were doing initiations in which members are instructed to go around and kill whoever they could, a police official said Monday. 
 
 During a news conference, Supt. Eddie Johnson said Monday it is clear that the victim, Arshell Dennis III, was not targeted because his father is a cop. He suggested it could be “a case of mistaken identity.” 
 
 “Detectives are working really hard,” Johnson added. “Any shooting victim that’s in Chicago is unacceptable, but this one hits close to home.” 
 
 The city’s bloody 2016 crossed another tragic line this weekend when Dennis was gunned down in front of his family’s home in Chicago’s Wrightwood neighborhood. 
 
 Dennis was supposed to return Sunday afternoon to St. John’s University in New York, where he studied journalism. Instead, his family spent the day planning his funeral, fending off reporters and meeting privately with Johnson. 
 
 Meanwhile, Chicago wrote another violent chapter in a year already full of anguish. 
 
 “The loss of our son is stunning and painful,” Dennis’ family said in a statement. 
 
 Dennis is the son of Officer Arshell “Chico” Dennis, who once served with Johnson as a patrol officer in the 6th District. Johnson spent about 20 minutes visiting the officer’s family in the light-brick home where the shooting took place, entering and exiting through the back door. The home is tucked into a generally quiet pocket of the Southwest Side. 
 
 Mayor Rahm Emanuel also called to express his condolences. 
 
 Johnson “shared with them that the police department is all one family, and they are grieving with them, and that if there is anything they can do for them, the police department will be there,” a family friend told the Chicago Sun-Times. 
 
 Family members referred to Dennis in their statement as “Trey.” They called him “smart, funny and the light of our lives.” He was a junior at St. John’s. His freshman-year roommate, 20-year-old Kyle DePina of Boston, said they used to discuss the violence in their respective cities. 
 
 “It’s crazy,” DePina said. “You never think it will happen to someone you’re close to until it happens.” 
 
 DePina published a videotaped interview of Dennis online. In it, Dennis discusses music, Chicago’s segregated neighborhoods and even police brutality. 
 
 “I couldn’t change the world,” Dennis said on the video as he discussed music’s influence on society. “For me to be able to change the world, that would take, maybe, I think it would take two lifetimes to change the world.” 
 
 Neighbor Terri Bachstrom described Dennis as a quiet and well-mannered kid and said, “He wasn’t in a gang. He wasn’t affiliated with any of the nonsense that’s going on in Chicago.” 
 
 But now Area South detectives are trying to figure out why he was shot to death while sitting with a 20-year-old man outside the home in the 2900 block of West 82nd Street. Dennis was shot in the chest and pronounced dead at Little Company of Mary Hospital at 12:45 a.m., authorities said. The 20-year-old was shot in the arm and chest and taken to Christ Medical Center in serious condition, police said. 
 
 CPD spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said investigators “are not ruling anything out.” But based on what they know about the victims, the neighborhood and the local gangs, a leading theory is that Sunday’s shooting was “a case of mistaken identity.” Neither victim had a criminal record, gang affiliation or history with CPD, he said. 
 
 “Officer Dennis dedicated his life to make this city safer, and his son Arshell was a good kid, making his parents proud and studying for a promising future as a journalist,” Johnson said in a statement. “As always, the men and women of the CPD will stop at nothing to find who was responsible and bring a sense of closure and justice to Officer Dennis and all of the families affected by violence.” 
 
 Johnson has led CPD through four tumultuous months that have featured escalating tension between police and the neighborhoods they serve. The unease reflects national discord, but it is fueled by local strife. Just last week, CPD alerted its members that leaders from three West Side gang factions met to discuss plans to shoot Chicago police. 
 
 That plan was an apparent response to the fatal police shooting of Paul O’Neal, who police chased into the South Shore neighborhood after he allegedly stole a Jaguar from west suburban Bolingbrook. O’Neal was unarmed, and the body camera worn by the officer who fired the deadly shot wasn’t working. 
 
 The city recently marked its highest single-day toll of shooting deaths in years when nine people were killed on Aug. 8, while sexual assaults, robberies and aggravated batteries are on the rise compared to year-to-date totals for the same period in 2015. 
 
 The Justice Department launched a pattern or practice investigation of CPD eight months ago, in the days after the release of video depicting the fatal police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. 
 
 CPD Officer Jason Van Dyke, who shot Laquan, is being prosecuted for murder. 
 
 Wrightwood residents said the kind of violence that ended in Dennis’ death Sunday is not common in their community. Pat Williams, who lives three doors down from Dennis’ family, said she left Bronzeville in search of a “peaceful” place. 
 
 But that peace was shattered early Sunday. Another neighbor, Brenda, who declined to give her last name, said she found herself crawling to the back of her house after hearing the gunshots. Eventually, she returned to her living room. And that’s when she heard a woman crying outside. 
 
 Brenda said, “I think it was the mother.” 
 
 “And she was crying so hard, I went to the back of the house to not hear it.” ||||| Published on Apr 30, 2015 
 
 This is a 5 minute interview with my roommate Arshell. He is from Chicago and loves rap and hip hop he also is very involved being the VP of St.John’s student NAACP. Arshell also writes and performs in poetry competitions. I choose to interview him because I feel like he has a unique perspective on society, life and music. I want to share a piece of his mind to somebody who doesn’t know him. ||||| Please enable Javascript to watch this video 
 
 CHICAGO -- A young man was shot and killed in the Wrightwood neighborhood just after midnight Sunday. Family members identified him as the son of a Chicago police officer and a future journalist. 
 
 Family, friends and Chicago fellow police officers scrubbed the blood from the sidewalk in front of the family home where 19-year-old Arshell Dennis III, also known as Trey, was killed. 
 
 It was just after midnight in the 2900 block of West 82nd Street where Edwards and some friends had just come back from a block party and where sitting on the front porch, when a gunman came from down the street and started shooting. 
 
 Dennis, a journalism major at St. John’s University in New York and 2010 graduate of Urban Prep Academy, was hit in the chest and was pronounced dead at the hospital. A 20-year-old man was shot in the arm and side of the chest. He was last listed in serious condition. Dennis had just come home on Thursday to surprise his mother for her birthday. He was scheduled to leave this afternoon to go back. 
 
 Arshell Edward Dennis III, son of #CPD officer shot and killed in shooting in front of own Wrightwood home @WGNNews pic.twitter.com/OoU0GahFXS — Tonya Francisco (@TonyaFrancisco) August 14, 2016 
 
 And to make matters worse, his mother heard the shots but she couldn’t do anything to save him because she is recovering from a debilitating illness. 
 
 Police say they have no one in custody and no description of the gunman to release. A police officer is now stationed in front of the family’s home keep watch on the house.
– Arshell Dennis III was due to fly back to New York on Sunday after a surprise visit home to Chicago for his sick mother's birthday, reports the Washington Post. Instead, the son of a Chicago police officer was shot dead. Police say Dennis, 19, was sitting on his family’s front porch, chatting with a friend after a block party, when an unknown assailant opened fire, reports WGN. Dennis—NAACP student chapter vice president at St. John's University, where he was studying journalism—was killed by a bullet to the chest, while his friend was taken to a hospital in serious condition with wounds to his arm and side. No arrests have been made but the shooting may have been a case of “mistaken identity” or part of a gang initiation, police tell the Chicago Sun-Times. There is "absolutely no credibility" to the idea that Dennis' death was linked to his father's role as a DEA task force officer, says Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson. "Any shooting victim that's in Chicago is unacceptable," he adds, "but this one hits close to home." Neither victim was involved in gangs or had a criminal history, says Johnson. Dennis—seen discussing police brutality in this YouTube video—"was a beautiful young man, full of laughs and always teasing us," his grandfather tells the Chicago Tribune. "It's a deep loss, and it hurts. I wish this senseless killing would stop." Nine people were killed over the weekend in Chicago, which had tallied 436 deaths from gun violence in 2016 as of Thursday. (In all, more than 2,000 people have been shot in the city this year.)