Arshell "Trey" Dennis, a 19-year-old journalism major at St. John's University in New York City and the son of a Chicago police officer, was shot and killed in Chicago over the weekend while paying a surprise visit to his sick mother. Dennis was sitting on the porch of his family's home on the Southwest side of Chicago on Saturday with a 20-year-old friend when someone opened fire, fatally wounding Dennis and injuring his friend, according to the Washington Post.
Eddie Johnson, Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, took part in a press conference on Monday afternoon to address repeat offenders who commit violent crimes and answered a question about Dennis' killing. Johnson called the shooting a case of "mistaken identity," rejecting theories suggesting that Dennis was targeted because of his father Arshell "Chico" Dennis' work as a Drug Enforcement Task Officer with the CPD. Johnson noted that the CPD has a list of suspects, but no one has been charged with killing Dennis yet.
Johnson added that "any shooting victim in Chicago is unacceptable, but this one hits home."
Many neighborhoods on Chicago's South and West sides, including the Wrightwood neighborhood where Dennis lived, have long been plagued with high levels of violent crime. Of the 437 murders the city has seen so far in 2016, 392 were shootings, according to DNA Info Chicago. The Chicago Sun Times reported earlier this week that the city's South Side police district has seen a 168 percent surge in the number of murders between 2015 and 2016.
