Jorge Sanchez was headed home from work on a Saturday night earlier this month when he encountered throngs of rideshares and pedestrians surrounding his home in Austin.
Sanchez, 35, is used to people hanging out on his block, and found one of the guys he recognized from other weekends.
“I was like, ‘You really outdid yourselves today,’” he said. “And he said, ‘Oh, this wasn’t us.’”
It was Club JROY: a massive end-of-summer party that had been all over Instagram and TikTok for days before people flooded blocks around the West Side neighborhood. It took place even after police had asked event promoter Jamal Williams to cancel, officials said.
Police reports put the center of Club JROY at the intersection of La Crosse Avenue and Maypole Street, a few houses up from where Sanchez lives. Authorities responded to at least three instances of gunfire within six-blocks of the intersection in the early morning hours of Aug. 10 as they struggled to contain a crowd estimated to be in the thousands at its peak.
Eight people were shot in the area, two fatally, and police arrested at least six others, according to public records and police sources. Those who were wounded and killed made up a quarter of the city’s gunshot victims for the entire weekend, police said.
The promoter, listed in CPS personnel records as a special education classroom assistant at Ellington Elementary School in Austin, has not been charged with any wrongdoing and strenuously denied that the shootings were connected with his party. He announced a few days later that he had been placed on paid suspension due to an investigation, which he said was meant to ensure his safety and that of the school following social media discussions of the shootings.
“The events that happened, I genuinely do feel bad,” Willams said in one post. “But that didn’t happen at the location I sent out. That was at different block parties that people decided to go to.”
Asked to comment on Williams’ announced suspension and the party, CPS representatives said in a statement that the district did not comment on personnel matters.
Police met with promoter Jamal Williams at Ellington days before the event was scheduled to take place and asked him to call it off, Ald. Jason Ervin said.
By the time Jorge Sanchez got home around 9:30 p.m. on Aug. 9, he found the street filled with people. They were still rolling up in droves around midnight, bringing people from as far away as suburbs including Lynwood and Plainfield.
“I was like, ‘what the heck is going on?’,” he said. “Everyone was talking about getting to the party.”
Sanchez and his brother-in-law did a few laps around their house and found that the party covered several blocks with people drinking, smoking and playing music in a crowd so dense that emergency workers couldn’t get through at some points to assist people.
Footage from Sanchez’s Ring doorbell around 2:45 a.m. the next morning shows North La Crosse Avenue crowded but otherwise calm before two gunshots sounded. More shooting can be heard on the video, apparently from two different locations on the block, as the crowd turned and ran south down the street. Many people hustled onto Sanchez’s front walk, sheltering in his doorway.
At least six people were hit in the shooting, police said. One of them, a 22-year-old woman whom the Cook County medical examiner’s office later identified as Jashura Monae Blackhawk, was shot in the back and died soon afterward.
As police attempted to cordon off the crime scene, they arrested a 35-year-old man who allegedly wouldn’t cooperate with their orders to disperse and shoved a cop.
At the same time, a few blocks to the west, a different group of officers were headed toward the shooting at LaCrosse and Maypole when they heard a single shot in an alley on the 200 block of North Lamon Avenue. They saw a man running up the alley, records show, and arrested him minutes later.
Police said Thursday no one was in custody in connection with the shooting that killed Blackhawk. One man was charged in a second shooting after the party that left a teenage boy dead.
About two hours after the first shooting, Cook County prosecutors said 18-year-old Kaleb Williams and his friends — all high school classmates — were walking south down North Lavergne Avenue away from the party when they encountered Ortez Owens and a second person near the intersection of Lavergne and Maypole.
Prosecutors alleged that 35-year-old Owens approached the teens and tried to talk to them about their car’s broken sunroof. He then allegedly took out a gun, told them to drop their backpacks and fired along with his companion as the group of friends scattered, hitting Williams in the back and his friend in the shoulder. A few minutes later, prosecutors alleged that Owens returned to where Williams lay and took the backpack before he left again.
After Owens was arrested, prosecutors alleged he told his wife that he had “done a murder” and that he had been looking to retaliate over his sunroof having been shot out. He also allegedly admitted to taking the backpack from Williams and remarking that there was nothing of value inside.
Cook County Judge Ankur Srivastava ordered Owens held while awaiting trial and said that his alleged actions showed “a total lack of self-control (and) total disregard for human life.”
Public defenders said that Owens’ friends and family had gotten social media threats in the days following the party and asked that Owens be placed into protective custody while awaiting trial. His next court date is set for Sept. 2.
In a TikTok dated Aug. 12, promoter Jamal Williams said that there were multiple block parties being held around the area and that he had left his party when he saw people clashing with police. He didn’t know about the shootings until the next morning, he said, and hadn’t canceled the gathering because the person who had been making threats later messaged him to say they hadn’t been serious.
Ald. Chris Taliaferro, 29th, whose ward covers Ellington Elementary, pointed out that there are plenty of gatherings in the area that go smoothly and “don’t get the same kinds of attention a street takeover would get” — in part because something like the Taste of Austin food festival or a city-sponsored midnight basketball game doesn’t draw the same attendance as street parties, but also because “it doesn’t sell papers (or) increase viewership.”
But he added that young people in particular needed more sponsored, well-organized outlets to have fun and socialize in their neighborhoods. And he said people who organize parties that attract violence need to see clear consequences for their actions.
“Their conduct is a participating factor in why these people are harmed,” he said. “Did they pull the trigger? Maybe not. But they called the party that brought out these people in the first place.”
Days before the gathering took place, Jamal Williams had posted a TikTok telling people who were discussing potential violence at the party to stay home.
“I just (saw) a post — it said ‘I’m coming 30 deep to Club JROY, try me if you want,’” he said in the TikTok, dated Aug. 5. “Who the (expletive) are you all into it with?… You can’t come!”
The next day, he posted another video. The party was still on.
