75 shot: Mothers of the slain keep waiting for the call even when cases grow cold: 'We’re living amongst killers'

Debra West lost her son Kendall Brown, 26, to gun violence. He was fatally shot in the 4800 block of South Winchester Avenue early on Aug. 5. [Photo: Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune]

The detective knows her voice right away.

“This is Debra West,” she starts. “I know,” he replies. “Hi, Miss West.”

She has dialed a number to reach the detective over and over, each time hoping for good news from the man tasked with the investigating the death of her 26-year-old son, Kendall Brown.

On the August weekend he was killed, he was one of at least 75 people shot in the city’s most violent weekend in more than two years. Brown is among hundreds of people who have been killed in Chicago in recent years, with most of those cases going unsolved.

Madeline Buckley, writing at the Chicago Tribune, continues the newspaper’s in-depth coverage of the tragic weekend in August that saw at least 75 Chicagoans gunned down. The entire series, “75 Shot,” is worth checking out.