Fourteen-year-old Deonte T. Lesley was in his bedroom playing video games on his Xbox 360 with a brother and two cousins when bullets ripped through the windows and walls of his south suburban home.
A bullet whizzed by Deonte’s 18-year-old brother, who dove to the floor and didn’t come up until the flurry of gunfire stopped. Deonte’s mother and aunt were in the living room and quickly ducked down on the floor.
When Monday night’s shooting — a matter of seconds — was over, Deonte lay unconscious on his bed, wounded in the head and chest. Known as a promising athlete with a cheerful attitude, the boy was pronounced dead just 40 minutes later.
“My son was destined for greatness,” his mother, Antoinette Walker, said Tuesday. “He was loved and he was very determined.”
Deonte, an eighth-grader at Thompson Instructional Center in Joliet, was scheduled to take an entrance exam this weekend to attend Providence Catholic High School in New Lenox, officials at the school said.
Although he had lived in the region for less than two years, he had secured a reputation as a talented quarterback, running back and safety for his youth football team, the Joliet Raiders.
“He was the type of player that when he showed up for a game or practice, you knew good things were going to happen,” said Raiders Athletic Director Tom Gruben. “He was a difference-maker. He was a leader on and off the field. He mattered so much, it was unreal.”
The shots were fired at about 8:19 p.m. Monday in the Fairmont neighborhood of Lockport Township, a mostly rural area on the outskirts of Joliet with a history of crime problems. Deonte’s 17-year-old cousin was shot in the right arm, authorities said, but his wound is not serious.
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Walker said police told her the gunfire probably came from behind a house across the street. Officials would not say if they thought Walker’s house was targeted.
There are no suspects and a motive is not known, said Ken Kaupas, a spokesman for the Will County sheriff’s office, which is leading the investigation.
Walker said she doesn’t know why anyone would shoot at her house. Deonte’s room is in the front of the house, facing the street.
Walker and her sons moved to the Fairmont community from Mississippi in 2009, she said. It’s her hometown, and she came back for family support after a divorce.
Deonte had dreams of football stardom.
“At the age of 11 he was talking to me about college,” Walker said. “‘I want to go to Texas,’ he said, ‘because that’s where the good football teams are. I’m going to make it to the NFL and take care of you.'”
Through tears, Deonte’s 21-year-old brother Ronald Green described his brother as a teen with promise.
“My little brother had dreams,” Green said. “I believe he was going to make it. He was no ordinary 14-year-old.”
The neighborhood, much of it surrounded by farmland, is filled with modest wood-frame houses that have playground equipment in the back yards and basketball hoops in the driveways and along the streets.
On Tuesday, yellow police tape surrounded Walker’s house on Fairmont Avenue and sheriff’s police cars were parked along the street. Neighbors watched from their windows as detectives marched in and out of the house, collecting evidence and surveying the scene.
“This is a surprise because there is never shooting on this block,” said neighbor Jose Ramirez, who said he has lived on Fairmont Avenue for 14 years. “It’s always quiet. I feel terrible. I don’t know what’s going on in our neighborhoods. I’m nervous for my own family now.”
Tribune photographer David Pierini and WGN-Ch. 9 reporter Nancy Loo contributed to this report.