… the playroom,” said his mother, LaKeesha Rucker, who stayed with him for two months at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
Through it all, Martrell has wanted to do things on his own. “He doesn’t want you to help him out with nothing. Martrell is very independent,” Rucker said.
He was shot about 11:30 p.m. May 23, 2008, in the 6400 block of South Bishop Street. He was asleep in the front passenger seat of his mother’s car. She was putting her two other children — Lawilliam, 8, and Kamisha, 2 — in her truck with the help of a 10-year-old nephew.
Rucker heard a gunman yelling at her brother-in-law, Marcus Easton. Even when Easton said he didn’t know what the man was talking about, the gunman charged halfway across the street, shooting at him, she said. When the shooter heard Rucker scream, he opened fire on her.
Martrell was the only child hit, which his mother realized when she saw blood coming from his mouth. “He was [asleep]. He didn’t even know he was shot,” she said.
The bullet that struck Martrell ruptured arteries and veins, came within inches of his heart and spinal cord, broke bones in his back and exited his body, Rucker said. After he was transported to University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital, his lungs kept collapsing.
“You could always do what you put your mind to. If someone tells you you can’t do that, do it anyway, because you will never know if you don’t try,” he said.
Martrell will go to a private boarding school in Boston for high school. He received a full scholarship.