CHICAGO -- Allen Hall hunched at a picnic table outside the University of Chicago Medical Center last week under the beating sun, his head in his hands.

A few days before, Hall’s 24-year-old daughter, Arneka McReynolds, had taken a special trip down to Chicago with her fiance from their home in Michigan to attend the Simeon Career Academy alumni cookout. That night of July 19, Hall woke up to his son banging on his front door, and he learned his daughter was at the hospital after being shot in the head.

Many people who attended the event had decamped to the Dan Ryan Woods after the official cookout ended. Others headed to south suburban Calumet City. And hundreds, including McReynolds, made their way to a Chatham parking lot on West 87th Street overlooking the Dan Ryan just before midnight when the gunfire started.

The lot has become a place where a small but dedicated group has gathered weekly for years to pray for the many people who get caught up in Chicago’s summer violence spike.

One man, identified as 24-year-old-Rasheed Walker, was pronounced dead less than an hour after the shooting, and others, including McReynolds, were wounded. No one has been charged, but police did make one arrest as they flooded the lot and searched the area for gunshot victims.

McReynolds remained on life support last week as Allen Hall wrapped up a meeting with her doctors at University of Chicago Medical Center.

Hall, 54, hadn’t known she planned to make the trip, but had spoken to her on the phone a few days earlier. He was getting ready to take a new job as a carpenter, he said, and she had just taken an exam to get a real estate license.

He’d been asleep when the shooting took place and woke up to his son “kicking and screaming at (the) front door.” As soon as he was awake enough to understand what happened, he got to the hospital and had more or less been there ever since.

Friends, relatives and neighbors had bombarded his phone with messages of support and their family was taking turns staying with McReynolds in the hospital room, he said. McReynolds had been “adamant” about her education and planned to be an early childhood teacher, he said. She played volleyball while a student at Simeon and at Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis, per the university’s athletic website.

“She didn’t play up front at the net,” Hall said. “She just kept the ball alive a lot.”

Hall had never been concerned for her safety before. In the days since the shooting, he’s wondered to himself how he might have been able to redirect her steps. And he has often thought about whoever fired into the crowd, and what he would like to tell that person.

“I want to send a message that this is not acceptable,” he said. “I got all the sympathy in the world for this kid, (but) I’m gonna make sure he understands and people like him understand that.”

The police tape was gone and the trash had been cleared out of the parking lot by the time Pastor Donovan Price returned July 21, a Monday.

Price has been holding the prayer meeting in that parking lot since 2020, at first in response to civil unrest in the weeks and months after George Floyd’s murder. He’s come back every summer since, beginning on Memorial Day and returning weekly through Labor Day.

He was home recuperating from an illness when his phone lit up with text messages early July 20. As the updates from police rolled in and the scale of the violence became clear, Price took the shooting personally at first, especially after he saw photos of the scene.

“Wow, look at that crowd,” he thought. “I could never get that many people to come out here. Me and Satan were having this thing.”

He had to force himself to change his tune, he said. And so Price stood there July 21 with about a dozen people and a guitar. A blue folding sign stood nearby. It read “stop by for prayer.”

The parking lot devotees formed a circle and Price began to speak. A Gresham (6th) District sergeant watched from a squad car about 100 yards away.

That Monday, they prayed for many things. They prayed for mothers accused of hurting or killing their children. They prayed for families selling chocolate and candy to make ends meet, and for the loved ones of young people who had been shot in the preceding week.

A pair of three-wheelers rolled into the lot, blasting R&B.

They prayed for the person who fired the gun at the gathering, that they would know “there is a different way.”

They prayed for the survivors.

“Somebody’s life has changed as a result of something that happened in this parking lot, Heavenly Father,” Price said. “Touch those who lived through this, let them know that you are there.”

Also wounded in the shooting was a 26-year-old man who was struck in the shoulder and in good condition. A third man, age 24, was treated and released at the scene, according to a police report.

A crew of officers who responded saw a man in blue pants and a blue sweatshirt run from the crowd holding his waistband before he got down on one knee behind a parked car. They allegedly saw a loaded black Glock handgun slide out from underneath the car and arrested the man, identified in court records as 34-year-old Chiquel Richardson.

Prosecutors on July 20 charged Richardson, who has three felony convictions, with illegal possession of a firearm and resisting arrest. Cook County Judge Shauna Boliker ordered Richardson held pending trial, court records show.

Nine days after the shooting, police said the investigation was still active. And McReynolds’ family was still in what Allen Hall described as prayer mode.

Doctors were waiting for the swelling in McReynolds’ brain to subside before they took stock of the damage, he said. And while there had been a few “small victories,” he still did not know what her chances were of recovery.

Price will continue to lead the gatherings in the parking lot. If anything, he said, it feels even more important to pray there now, both for the place itself and everyone who comes across it.

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