A 47-year-old man found unresponsive at an apartment fire Saturday morning in the Kenwood neighborhood had suffered a gunshot wound to the head, Chicago police said.
Authorities were summoned about 6:30 a.m. to a townhouse fire in the 4900 block of South Cornell Avenue, where the unresponsive man was discovered with a gunshot wound to the head.
The victim, Boyd Anthony Jarrell, of the Cornell Avenue address, was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. An autopsy is scheduled for Sunday.
Christopher Hague, Jarrell’s next-door neighbor, said he wasn’t sleeping well Saturday morning and heard noises coming from their shared wall, which was unusual because Jarrell was normally “incredibly quiet.”
The noise, Hague said, sounded almost like a “young child rhythmically bouncing a tennis ball off the stairs.” The sound eventually turned into more of a “whooshing,” rather than a “ping,” he said. He decided to get out of bed and open his window, at which point he smelled and saw smoke.
“I thought maybe my house is also burning down, so I just ran outside and the minute I stepped out, I noticed just billowing black smoke coming out of the third floor,” Hague said.
Hague called 911, and said firefighters arrived within about 10 minutes. While they battled the blaze, Hague said neighbors gathered outside in a courtyard, “worrying whether our neighbor was in there.”
At first, Hague said they believed Jarrell wasn’t inside because one of his cars — a Lamborghini — that was typically in the garage was missing. A firefighter later told the neighbors Jarrell was dead, and Hague said he was “horrified” when he learned that his neighbor had been shot in the head from news reports.
Jarrell had moved into his home within the past couple of years, and was a “meticulous, quiet, thoughtful, kind guy,” Hague said.
Hague added that Jarrell befriended one of his college-aged sons. “They got along, talked, and so as a family, we’re shocked, and it’s kind of a difficult day,” he said.
No one was in custody and detectives were investigating.
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