The mother of a 4-year-old Alabama boy who was killed by a stray bullet during a trip to Chicago is pleading with her son’s killer to come forward — telling the shooter, “I know it’s tearing you up inside.”
Angela Gregg, whose son, Mychal Moultry Jr., died Sunday, two days after he was shot while getting his hair braided at his father’s Woodlawn apartment, made the emotional plea Thursday outside a church, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
“Let us be at ease,” Gregg said while wearing a T-shirt showing her son’s smiling face. “Give us some type of peace. Don’t take that away from us, too. Don’t take our son and take our peace, like our peace of mind. Like, give us something. You’ve taken everything.”
Gregg said her son was so excited to visit the Windy City from his home in Decatur, Alabama, that he kept asking when the plane would arrive so they could start their Labor Day weekend trip. The pair arrived earlier Friday, the Chicago Tribune reported.
“He was so happy to be here,” Gregg said. “He loved this city.”
Gregg wrote in an online fundraiser she set up for her son that he was shot twice in the head during a drive-by shooting as he was getting his hair done.
“He lost his innocent life,” Gregg wrote on the website, which had garnered more than $17,000 as of Friday. “Please donate to help us raise awareness and get justice for my baby. Please, as his parents, we are begging the world for help.”
A Chicago police spokeswoman told The Post early Friday that no arrests had been made in an ongoing investigation. Anyone with information about the boy’s slaying should contact the department directly or submit an anonymous tip.
Cops have said Mychal was struck by gunfire fired from outside his father’s apartment that shattered a front window.
“It is unknown who fired the shots or where they came from,” Chicago police said in a statement Monday.
Mychal, also known as “MJ,” was one of six people fatally shot throughout Chicago over the Labor Day holiday weekend. In all, 63 victims were hurt in 49 shootings, police said.
The boy was the second 4-year-old shot in Chicago in the span of a week, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Forty-one other children age 17 and younger have been gunned down in the city this year, according to data compiled by the newspaper.
Mychal’s father, Mychal Moultry Sr., said his gifted son was readying to be tested to see if he could skip a grade later this week, the Tribune reported.
“He’ll never be able to do that,” Moultry said Thursday. “This is terrible.”
A community activist who joined Mychal’s parents angrily called on the public to offer up some clues, according to the Sun-Times.
“We gotta put an end to people shooting and killing children,” activist Andrew Holmes said at the press conference. “Am I my brother’s keeper or am I my brother’s killer?”