Teba Stewart said her 13-year-old son should have been shopping for school supplies, eating all the food from her fridge and taking over the TV in her bedroom Tuesday. Instead, she and dozens of others were remembering her son, Ashawn Davis, who was fatally shot Sunday night inside an apartment in Edgewater. “I just want justice .
.. That’s all I want, right here, justice for my kid, my NBA player,” Stewart said, pointing to two large photos of Ashawn, who played basketball at Swift Elementary.
“That’s all I want right now. If y’all can do that for me, I can sleep, I can eat, I can put a smile back on my face.” As the crowd, mostly dressed in Ashawn’s favorite color of light blue, released blue and white balloons near the corner of Division and Halsted streets, they yelled “Doodie,” a nickname Stewart gave to Ashawn.
Many cried as they watched the balloons for a couple minutes drift into the sky. Ashawn grew up near Cabrini Green with two older sisters, 15 and 18. When the boy was around 10, Stewart moved with her family to Iowa because she was worried about the violence in the city, she said.
They eventually moved back to Chicago and found a place in Edgewater. Shawn Childs, Ashawn’s uncle and founder of the anti-violence groups House of Hope Foundation and No Kids Die in the Chi, said his nephew was put in tough situations growing up around gangs and violence. “He was a regular kid.
He was what you would call the average kid trying to find his way,”.