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Nicknamed “Yummy” because of his love of cookies, standing 137 cm (4 ft 6 in),Robert Sandifer was a young member of the street gang the Black Disciples (BD)
After committing murder, arson and armed robbery, he was murdered by his own fellow gang members
Sandifer’s mother, Lorina Sandifer, had over 30 arrests while prostituting, many of which were drug-related. Sandifer’s father, Robert Akins, was absent throughout Sandifer’s life due to incarceration for a felony gun charge. Sandifer was physically abused from the time he was an infant.
Sandifer, by the age of eight, quit attending school and began to roam the streets stealing cars and breaking into houses. At the age of ten, Sandifer was arrested on charges of armed robbery. A psychological examiner at the time reported that “Robert is a child growing up without any encouragement and support,” and that he “has a sense of failure that has infiltrated almost every aspect of his inner self.”
He liked luxury cars, and remarkably, was able to drive them despite his small size. Many of his 23 felonies and 5 misdemeanors were committed in the course of running errands for street gangs. The penal system had no way to keep him out of trouble and the courts were helpless to lock him away because he was too young for juvenile detention and too dangerous to be placed with children his age. He never got in serious trouble for his crimes due to his age.
On August 28, 1994, Sandifer was ordered to do a favor for his gang. He opened fire several times with a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, striking several youths. Sandifer quickly fled the scene. Among the victims was 14-year-old Shavon Dean, who was hit by a stray bullet and later died from her gunshot wounds. The crime spree made national headlines. The nation was shocked by the brutality of the crime and the fact that the alleged perpetrator was 11 years old. The Chicago Police began a manhunt for Sandifer. According to Sgt. Ronald Palmer, of the Chicago Police, Sandifer’s actions were a gang initiation gone wrong.
He finally ended up at the home of a neighbor and said he wanted to reach his grandmother, one of the few people he trusted to be with him when he surrendered to police — a troubling prospect for the leaders of his Black Disciples gang, police theorized.
The neighbor left Yummy on her porch for just a moment when a fellow gang member, 14-year-old Derrick Hardaway, suddenly appeared in a gangway. In an instant, the two boys were gone. Less than an hour later, Yummy’s lifeless body was found in a viaduct several blocks away.
“I completely lost it," the neighbor later said. "All I could think of was I almost saved this kid’s life.”
His autopsy offered some clues to his past: His small body “bore 49 scars,” noted the chief medical examiner in a 1996 Tribune article. “Some likely the result of the normal falls and mishaps of youth, but others just as likely evidence of the abuse he suffered at an early age.”
Born to a mother with drug issues and a mostly absent father, as a toddler Yummy was removed from his mother’s home after he was found with multiple bruises and cord marks on his tiny body, and cigarette burns on his neck, shoulder blade and buttocks.
“Robert is a child growing up without any encouragement and support,” an examiner at a state-run shelter wrote in a psychological report months before Yummy’s death. “He is lonely and feels poorly about himself. He has a sense of failure that has infiltrated almost every aspect of his inner self.
“He is caught up in a never-ending cycle of emotional overload and acting out,” the report continued. “His anger is so great that his perception of the world is grossly distorted and inaccurate.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sandifer
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-yummy-sandifer-25-years-later-20190829-3xrgt2onqrgd7bqiyxmjm3n2ri-story.html