Nowhere to go, but down

William Luttrell attended Riverside-Brookfield High School for just four days at the start of the school year.

It was just one brief stop in the life of a kid who never really had a home. Luttrell, who was by all accounts a very smart, but troubled boy, lived in a series of foster care facilities much of his life.

Almost exactly a month after his first day of school at RB, Luttrell was gunned down, shot to death in a drive-by shooting in the wee hours of the morning on a street in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood. He was 16 years old.

Chicago police are still investigating Luttrell’s murder.

“We have no one in custody and the investigation is ongoing,” said Officer Mike Sullivan of the Chicago Police Department’s news affairs office. Gang slogans were shouted at the time of the shooting, according to the Chicago police.

Luttrell was a ward of the state of Illinois and was in the custody of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS).

“DCFS can confirm that William Luttrell became a ward of the state of Illinois May of 1997,” said Jimmie Whitelow, a spokesperson for DCFS.

Luttrell’s half brother Jeramy, a 22-year-old Brookfield resident and a 2006 RB graduate, registered William for classes at RB this summer after his brother had run away from the Aunt Martha’s foster care facility in Aurora.

Aurora police Detective Kevin Jenkins said that a missing juvenile report for Luttrell was issued at the end of July.

RB officials were unaware of that report when Luttrell was registering for classes at RB. Local police say that there was a Douglass County warrant for Luttrell’s arrest for violating a court order. RB officials were also apparently unaware of that.

RB officials said that Jeramy Luttrell brought in enough paperwork to register his younger brother without specifically saying what paperwork Jeramy Luttrell brought in.

“The paperwork made it official enough for him to register,” said RB Principal Pamela Bylsma.

On Monday, District 208 Interim Superintendent David Bonnette said that RB officials had documentation that DCFS had placed William Luttrell in the care of his brother.

“He was assigned to his brother at some time, which enabled him to be regarded as a legitimate resident. Although, if there was a textbook case of somebody who was homeless, he would probably fit into that category too,” said Bonnette who added that much of the limited information RB had about Luttrell was confidential.

DCFS officials did not respond prior to press time to a Landmark inquiry, asking among other things, whether DCFS had ever placed William Luttrell in the care of his brother.

RB officials say that they did not know about the missing juvenile report or arrest warrant, but say that it wouldn’t have mattered if they had known.

“It would probably be immaterial if DCFS placed him with a relative,” Bonnette said.

In his brief time at RB, Luttrell impressed those he came in contact with.

“He was doing fine in the days he was here, and teachers were making connections with him, and all of a sudden he just disappeared on us,” Bylsma said. “People were very concerned and trying to locate him and cooperate with the family and doing the best we could, but we were unsuccessful in that.”

Jeramy Luttrell was arrested on Aug. 18 and charged with mob action after allegedly joining with two other men in an attack on a 16 year old at Eight Corners intersection in Brookfield. In 2006, Jeramy Luttrell was convicted of theft in connection with a Riverside incident and received two years probation, according to Riverside Police Chief Tom Weitzel.

Efforts by the Landmark to contact Jeramy Luttrell have been unsuccessful. Brenda Coulson, William Luttrell’s grandmother, said last weekend that she was told that Jeramy has now left the state. Coulson said that Jeramy did not attend his brother’s wake on Friday.

This summer William Luttrell, whom his grandmother called Willie, told her that he was living with Jeramy and working with his brother in a landscaping business.

“He had a job and was doing good,” Coulson said. “William always called and kept in touch with me.”

In the summer 2009, Luttrell had run away from a juvenile care facility in Peoria and showed up at his grandmother’s home in Logan Square. He stayed for a few months, sleeping on a couch even after Coulson informed authorities that he was staying with her.

Coulson enrolled William at Kelvyn Park High School in Chicago in 2009, where she said he joined the football team. Luttrell was familiar with the neighborhood, because when he was younger he had he lived nearby for a few years with a foster parent.

“I had him in school,” Coulson said. “He would go down and see the foster mother who lived only a few blocks from me. He was basically a good boy. He did have some trouble, but he was a good boy. He listened to me to a T.”

Coulson said that DCFS eventually insisted that Luttrell return to the juvenile facility in Peoria. This angered and upset Coulson and her adult son, 27-year-old Audon Olivas, William Luttrell’s uncle.

“They had come up and they told Billy, well you have to go back,” Coulson said. “I don’t know how they persuaded that boy, but he did not want to go. They told him he had to go, and I was very upset.”

So was Olivas.

“They took him out of my house, took him back to boys group home, still couldn’t contain him, and I guess he had run away again with two other fellows from his group home and they ended up in the city,” Olivas said.

Marisol Hukic’s aunt was Luttrell’s foster mother for a few years when he was young and Hukic lived in the same Logan Square home with Luttrell. Hukic, now 21, says that she considered Luttrell like a brother and they kept in touch over the years.

“He was just a normal kid who needed a lot of love,” Hukic said.

Luttrell was very smart, she said.

“He was ridiculously intelligent,” Hukic said. “Even when he was in kindergarten they wanted to skip him up a grade. He was always really smart – very, very intellectual.”

But after leaving Hukic’s aunt’s home, life became chaotic for Luttrell.

For a time he lived with his mother in the small town of Atwood, near Decatur, Coulson said.

But his mother had a lot of problems and lost custody.

“She just basically lost her mind,” Coulson said.

After that, Luttrell just shuttled from place to place.

“He moved around a lot,” Hukic said. “He didn’t have a place to live. He was just an all-around good kid who unfortunately was lost and not guided.”

In recent years it got worse.

“It was always difficult to keep in contact with him for about two or three years,” Hukic said. “He would call from one number and not be there anymore. I didn’t know where he was staying. He would call me from different phone numbers.”

Hukic saw Luttrell last winter, and she says that at that time Luttrell was not going to school and had nowhere permanent to live.

“He wasn’t in school at all,” Hukic said. “He wasn’t living in one location. Billy kind of just stayed where he could. It wasn’t a kind of thing where he had a home or a place to live.”

Hukic says that she never heard that Luttrell was in a gang.

“Me and him had a very honest relationship,” Hukic said. “If he was gang banging he would have told me straight up, because he was a very honest kid. We had that type of relationship where he would have told me something of that nature.”

His grandmother, who had to identify Luttrell’s body after he was killed, says that she doesn’t know what her grandson was doing on the streets on the morning he was shot.

She just wishes he would have called her and let her know where he was so that she could have gone to get him.

“I would have ran to him,” Coulson said.

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