For many students at Tilden High School, summer vacation began with their classmate’s memorial service.
Dozens of high schoolers, neighbors and friends gathered outside the Back of the Yards school Thursday morning on the last day of classes for Chicago Public Schools beneath a blinking message board that read “Peace Walk for Pedro.”
Pedro Ramírez, a junior at Tilden, had been shot and killed on his way to the school on May 26. At Thursday’s march and memorial, students and staff remembered Ramírez — a two-sport athlete who had recently made the school’s honor roll — as a leader on his volleyball and soccer teams and in the school’s hallways.
Many, like Tilden junior Liz Beidy, brought signs that called for justice to be served to the shooter, who was still at large as of Thursday morning. Police arrested a man in connection with the shooting within hours, but later released him without charges.
“It’s not fair how his life got taken away while coming to school,” the 16-year-old said. “And it doesn’t seem fair how the people are still out there, and my friend’s never going to come back, and they’re living a normal life. And his family is just here suffering.”
Other signs referenced Ramírez’s volleyball jersey: “Forever #9.” After walking from Tilden to the site of the shooting, at the intersection of 51st and Throop Streets, his teammates crowded together at the front.
They stood in their blue and yellow jerseys, their arms wrapped around each other as Tilden’s athletic director, Crystle Saylor, spoke briefly about how Ramírez was “known for the way he treated people.”
“He was the first to volunteer when something needed to get done,” she said. “He had friends in every corner of this building … there’s a reason he made homecoming court every year.”
Volleyball coach Carlos Delcid, surrounded by other players in their jerseys, said he saw the boy as one of his own children.
“If my son grows up to be just like him, I’ll be the happiest, proudest father there could be,” he said.
Ramírez’s parents, Asucena Velazquez and Eloisa Garcia, led the march and listened to the tributes from the front row of the crowd. Each wore a No. 9 jersey.
Garcia spoke last and thanked the crowd for their support, but also posed a question: “Where’s the mayor at?”
She said she wanted to see more elected officeholders turn their attention to her son’s shooting.
“There should be charges going out,” she said. “We need more officials to be here, because he was just walking to school.”
Not everyone who came out to the memorial was a Tilden student. Ximena Soto, 21, her father Felix Soto, along with her mom and little sister, brought up the rear of the march, holding hands.
The family lived down the street from Ramírez, Ximena Soto said. They hadn’t known him well, but would see him walking his dog.
“He was the same age as my brother,” said. “He also takes the bus to school.”
With his daughter translating, 50-year-old Felix Soto said he had checked his surveillance camera footage from the morning of the shooting, and saw Ramirez and his own 17-year-old son had left for school within 10 minutes of each other.
“It could be anyone,” he said. “He was just a kid. He went to school, came back from school. He did nothing wrong.”