Therical Gassion was still in his white painter’s clothes Tuesday night when his friend dropped him at home after a long work day.
“We were all inside,” Gassion’s sister, Lytonya Gassion, said Wednesday. “We heard five or six shots. We all fell to the floor because it was so loud and so close.”
When the shooting stopped, she looked out the front and saw “something white in the distance.”
It was her 45-year-old brother, Therical, shot in the chest at 8:40 p.m. outside the home where he lives with his sister and parents in the 3600 block of Van Buren Street.
Gassion died at the Methodist Hospitals Northlake campus about an hour later.
A painter by trade, Gassion loved music and spent his free time in a studio.
“His name meant to make things better and that’s what he tried to do, make things better. He always had a good word for people,” his sister, five years his junior, said from the family home. “He was a very low key person.”
Family members are baffled why anyone would want to kill him. His sister made an appeal to anyone who has the smallest bit of information that could help police identify the shooter.
“If they have any information at all, it would be greatly appreciated,” she said.
Detectives Cpl. Edward Gonzalez and James Bond are investigating the homicide. Anyone with information can reach Gonzalez at (219) 881-4750 and Bond at (219) 881-4751.
Contact Lori Caldwell at [email protected]