Family members and friends lament the murder of Glenbrook North High School football star Miles Thompson who was shot down during a visit with his father in Chicago.
Thompson, 18, had driven from the north suburban town to Chicago’s violent Austin neighborhood to visit with his father on Wednesday. But the next morning he was found shot dead in an alley behind his father’s home, the Chicago Police said, according to the Daily Herald.
A surveillance video reportedly shows a group of three young men emerging from a car in the alley. One of the men then pulls a gun and shoots Thompson down. The teen was hit one time in the chest. The three attackers then simply drove off. Thompson’s car and all his personal belongings were still on the scene when his body was found.
Friends, fellow students, and family members were shocked by the death as Thompson was a young man on the path of great success. He had just won a full scholarship at St. Ambrose University in Iowa and had his eye on a possible NFL career after college.
Thompson’s family called the teen their “hero.”
“You can’t make rhyme or reason of this. You can’t,” said the teen’s stepfather, Michael Cooper. “They killed a superhero. To this community, my son was a superhero. To us, he was a superhero. You, as a parent, would dream to have a kid like this.”
“All of my kids are that way, but he was the oldest, and he carried himself in such a fashion. I wasn’t that mature at 18. I looked up to him because he was such a good kid,” Cooper added.
“I miss my boy. I miss my boy,” the teen’s father, Marc Thompson, added.
The Chicago Police still have no motive for the murder, but there is some idea that perhaps the shooters mistook him for someone else.
“He didn’t hang out on the West Side. Didn’t know anyone on the West Side,” Cooper explained.
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