By Peter Nickeas, Grace Wong and Megan Crepeau
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — Gloria Cotton choked up as she talked about the kindness of her son, a retired Cook County corrections officer shot dead early Wednesday by someone trying to steal his car on the South Side.
“I’m good,” the 81-year-old Cotton finally said. “God is good. In spite of all the things that go on, you’ve got to give God credit still.”
Police say Ira Cotton, 56, was shot as he visited a friend at a brick two-flat in the 7400 block of South Ingleside Avenue shortly after midnight. He had stopped by to find out about a graduation party for the friend’s son, according to relatives.
He was on the porch when someone walked up and demanded his car keys, then shot him in the leg, police said. He was pronounced dead at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.
“Whatever happened, the guy just shot him. Just arbitrarily shot him,” Gloria Cotton said. The bullet hit a vein in her son’s leg and he bled to death, she said.
The robber got away, according to police.
Cotton remembered her son as a hard worker and a family man, with two children and four grandchildren.
He worked as a correctional officer at the County Jail for 20 years, she said. After he retired, he spent time helping his mother with the apartment building she owns and lives in.
He was an Eagle Scout as a boy and a kind, helpful man, she said.
“He helped anybody,” she said. “If you were trying to get out of your car, he would help you in or out of it. Help you with your groceries.”
Ira Cotton was among seven people shot in Chicago Tuesday and early Wednesday, including two 16-year-old boys.
One of the boys was shot in the leg in the 3000 block of West 40th Place in the Brighton Park neighborhood around 8:15 p.m., police said. The boy was on a porch when a light-colored vehicle drove up and someone inside fired, hitting the boy. Someone drove the boy to St. Anthony Hospital, where he was in good condition, police said.
An hour after the shooting, a 17-year-old boy stood in front of his aunt’s house, near where his friend was shot. The boy said he and a friend and the boy were outside the house. The 17-year-old was waiting for his parents to pick him up.
Valerie Delgado, 22, and the 17-year-old’s cousin pulled into the driveway and the boys went over to her car. A silver car pulled up and someone yelled before firing more than eight shots, Delgado said. The 17-year-old said he saw the flash of the gun as it went off.
“Right here, it skid me,” the teen said, lifting up his right foot to touch the back of his white Converse shoe that now had a flap where a bullet penetrated the fabric. “Close, yeah.”
The teen’s friend was hit in the leg. “He was in shock,” Delgado said. “He didn’t know what to do. They were shooting at him and his dog.”
Mario Guzman, the 17-year-old’s father, said the family had moved from this neighborhood, but the boy still attended high school there.
“They feel like if they shot somebody, then they accomplished something,” Guzman said.
Delgado agreed. “Each day is getting worse. You can’t even be outside your home.”
The other 16-year-old was shot about 11 hours earlier in the Lawndale neighborhood. The boy was in the 1300 block of South Albany Avenue about 9:30 a.m. when someone shot him in the leg, according to Officer Jose Estrada, a police spokesman.
The boy told police he heard shots and felt pain, police said. He’s in good condition at Mount Sinai Hospital.
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