Relatives mourn UIC student slain in Douglass Park while waiting for mom: ‘He was the baby of the family, but he took care of us all’

A 19-year-old man about to start his sophomore year at UIC was fatally shot while waiting to pick up his mom from a doctor’s appointment Wednesday afternoon near Mount Sinai Hospital, according to his family and Chicago police.

Giovanni Flores had dropped his mother off at the hospital, 1500 S. Fairfield Ave., about noon, grabbed lunch and found a parking spot nearby at 1625 S. Farrar Drive, the inner drive of Douglass Park, to wait for her, police said.

His mom texted Flores at 1:15 p.m. to say she was ready, but when she didn’t hear back from him, she became worried and began searching.

Noticing a large police presence in the park across the street, she then saw his 2011 Ford Explorer.

But Flores was already inside Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 1:34 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

Holding back sobs, his older siblings, Steven and Jessica Flores, described the grief gripping the family, especially their mom who was last to see him.

“He had so much to live for,” Jessica Flores, 31, said. “He was excited; he was a young kid trying to figure out his next steps.”

Steven Flores, 27, said the attackers did not take anything. His phone was found, and it wasn’t an attempted carjacking.

The family has no idea why this happened, and Chicago police said a motive was not known.

Officers were called to the scene when alerted by ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection system, and found Giovanni Flores still in the driver’s seat, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds to the left side of his body, according to a police report.

After reviewing camera footage, police learned he was shot by two unknown assailants inside another SUV, which fled after the attack, according to the report.

At least seven shell casings were “strewn” in the street, around the driver’s side of the Explorer. No arrests have been made.

Giovanni Flores grew up in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood on the Southwest Side, where he still lived with his parents.

He attended elementary school in the Pilsen neighborhood before graduating from Lane Tech High School last year.

“He did really well in school,” said Jessica Flores, who added he had been enrolled in a gifted program in grade school.

It was “really cool” to see the youngest in their family getting ready to go out into the world, they said.

He’d just finished up his freshman year at University of Illinois at Chicago, where he was taking mostly business classes and hadn’t yet declared a major.

Giovanni Flores was already preregistered for the fall term, set to begin Aug. 22, according to UIC spokeswoman Sherri McGinnis Gonzalez.

“He was the baby of the family, but he took care of us all,” said Jessica Flores, who added he had recently helped her move to Texas for school.

He always had a joke and was always with his family.

“He was selfless and so kind,” Jessica Flores said. “He was a joy to be around.”

rsobol@chicagotribune.com