In Memory Of Slain Navy Veteran Jermia Millsap, Watch Out This Summer

CHICAGO — Every summer holiday weekend reminds me of the tragic death of decorated U.S. Navy veteran and young father, Jermia Millsap.

He survived serving in war zones, and died from a gunshot in Chicago.

In the summer of 2013 — one of the least violent years in Chicago since the 1960s — Millsap shared cocktails with friends after the kids went to bed, outside his house on Maxwell Street, an invisible dividing line between rival gangs that's just blocks away from a police station.

Around 3 a.m. July 5 that year, two men exited a dark sedan on his block and opened fire. Folks hanging out on the sidewalk scattered and screamed.

Millsap, a father of four, ran. He got stopped by a bullet to the abdomen. His wife, hugged him before paramedics arrived, and told him he'd be OK.

Millsap died at Stroger Hospital the next day. Documentary filmmakers caught his last moments on the operating table that were later broadcast on CNN's "Chicagoland," a docuseries that I narrated and helped produce.

Millsap was 25 and never got to see his only daughter take her first steps.

Millsap served in the U.S. Navy from January 2008 to February 2012, including tours of duty in the Middle East.

"He went over to Iraq. He's been to Afghanistan. He … fought over there. And for them to kill him in the street like that, ain't right," Millsap's father, Gregory Millsap, said at his son's funeral.

The memory of his death still haunts me on summer holiday weekends.

“We got caught up in the middle of a gang war, and we didn’t have nothing to do with it," the late seaman's brother-in-law told Erica Demarest, a reporter and my former DNAinfo colleague, back then.

That was nearly nine years — and thousands of murders in Chicago — ago.

And these days, it feels like Chicagoans could get caught up in violence they have nothing to do with in any corner of town while our city's stuck playing defense against random, senseless and persistent shootings.

On Friday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot told reporters of her administration's plans to keep the peace at the holiday kickoff to the unofficial start of summer, including an app to find hundreds of safe activities for city kids.

She called on families to take personal responsibility for keeping themselves safe by abiding by the city's new 10 p.m. curfew on weekends.

Chicago's top cop, David Brown, pledged more police on the CTA and in every neighborhood for the holiday weekend, including more bike and foot patrols near parks and beaches.

There will be DUI checkpoints, carjacking task force missions and cops targeting gun seizures, street gangs and organized retail robberies as families gather at parties and picnics marking a holiday weekend that's meant to honor military men and women who sacrificed their lives while serving our country.

In memory of Jermia Millsap, watch out.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docuseries on CNN and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary "16 Shots.
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