Tavon Tanner, 11, is one of 24 children 12 or younger shot in Chicago in 2016. This is his story. Even in the daily chronicle of 2016’s Chicago violence, Monday, Aug. 8, stood out: the city’s deadliest day in 13 years. Nineteen people were shot, nine of them killed. Among the wounded was a 10-year-old boy who had been playing on his porch on West Polk Street in the Lawndale neighborhood. Tavon Tanner. He had carried the bullet in his small body since the August night it pierced his back near the base of his spinal cord and ripped upward, ravaging his pancreas, his stomach, his spleen, a kidney, his left lung. He sometimes texted his mother in the middle of the night to tell her that it hurt. From the first day of January through the middle of December this year, 24 children 12 or younger were shot in Chicago. Shot stepping out of a car. Playing in the street. In front of a home. Outside a Golden Fish & Chicken restaurant.
