Vigil honors hospital worker fatally shot inside East Chatham apartment

CHICAGO — A gathering Tuesday helped honor a Holy Cross Hospital medical assistant found shot to death last week inside an apartment in the city’s East Chatham neighborhood.

Co-workers held a balloon release in remembrance of Javonni Jenkins. Chicago police found Jenkins and her 79-year-old father, Curtis Hardman, fatally shot inside an apartment near East 82nd Street and South Drexel Avenue on Dec. 7.

Authorities also discovered an unharmed 2-year-old child inside the residence.

Officers were called to the apartment for a welfare check after one of Jenkin’s co-workers tried to call, but her 2-year-old son answered the phone instead, Nicole Worth told WGN News last week.

Former Illinois Public Health director and now president and CEO of Sinai Chicago Dr. Ngozi Ezike called the shooting both ‘shocking’ and ‘painful.’

“You see it every day and we are not immune to the effects of it, especially when it knocks directly on our door and impacts our caregiver family,” Ezike said.

No one is in custody.