Dashaun Green was two weeks away from heading back to college. His friend Teris King had just walked across the stage to get his high school diploma. On Sunday night, they were hanging out with about fifteen other teens at a short-term rental on Coolidge Highway in Oak Park, celebrating a birthday with a pajama party. Nobody in that house expected the night to end in gunfire.
By 4:48 Monday morning, the house was quiet and most of the kids were already asleep. That was when somebody outside pulled up and opened fire. A neighbor down the street heard between 40 and 50 rapid gunshots, describing the sound like a semi-automatic weapon tearing through the quiet neighborhood just south of Nine Mile Road.
Bullets cut right through the walls of the rental home while the teenagers slept inside. One 16-year-old boy woke up to the noise and ran out the front door into the dark, wearing nothing but his socks. When the chaos stopped, Green and King lay dead inside. Two other young people were hit by the gunfire and rushed to the hospital, where doctors listed them in stable condition.
Green’s father, Davains Green, stood outside the crime scene hours later, trying to make sense of why his son was dead. He said Dashaun was killed in the back of the house. He also said his son did not even know the people who pulled the trigger. Davains pleaded publicly for the shooters to put the guns down, saying they took his whole world away in an instant.
Family members gathered near the yellow police tape on Coolidge Highway throughout the morning, holding hands and holding each other as investigators walked the property. They remembered Green as a respectful, well-mannered young man who was working hard to build a future for himself. Instead of packing his bags for his sophomore year of college, his family is now planning a funeral.
Police say the trouble started earlier in the night when a group of uninvited guests showed up at the pajama party. The teens inside politely asked the uninvited group to leave, and they appeared to walk away without an argument. But investigators believe someone returned hours later in the dark and unloaded dozens of rounds directly into the front of the residence.
As of Monday evening, Oak Park police had made no arrests in the double homicide. Yellow evidence markers stretched down Coolidge Highway where shell casings littered the asphalt. Public safety officials are asking anyone who saw or heard anything around 4:30 a.m. on Coolidge Highway to call Oak Park Public Safety at 248-691-7520.
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