Chicago man stabbed 13 times in front of a 7-year-old. The Tribune made it about the 'climate for trans people.'

Larry Young was 50 years old. On the evening of Wednesday, October 7, he was stabbed 13 times near a gas station in the 1400 block of East 87th Street on Chicago’s South Side. He was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center and died there.

The man charged with killing him is Kelly Day, 32, of Chatham. Day is a trans-identified male. The Chicago Tribune reports that he “was assigned male at birth but identifies as a woman.” He is charged with first-degree murder.

Prosecutors say a 7-year-old boy, Day’s stepson, was there when it happened.

What prosecutors say happened

At a detention hearing on Saturday, October 10, Assistant State’s Attorney Sara Grgurovic laid out the state’s case, according to the Tribune:

Earlier that day, a group of people mocked Day for using the women’s bathroom at a McDonald’s. Prosecutors say Day told his wife that he didn’t want “bullies” to get away with making fun of his gender.
That evening, Day, his wife and his 7-year-old stepson were walking west on 87th Street. Young, who didn’t know Day, walked up to them. Prosecutors say he “approached calmly” but started making comments about Day’s gender.
Day became “extremely angry” and argued with Young, prosecutors say, and resisted his wife’s attempts to pull him away.
Young pushed Day and then walked away, toward a gas station across the street.
Prosecutors say Day followed him across the street. The two fought for several moments.
Prosecutors say surveillance video from the gas station shows Day holding a knife and standing over Young as he lay on the ground, stabbing him 13 times in the head, neck and upper shoulders.

The attack was so violent, authorities say, that the tip of the knife blade broke off in Young’s skull. A pathologist later recovered it. The Cook County Medical Examiner ruled Young’s death a homicide caused by multiple sharp force injuries.

The 911 calls

Prosecutors say Day called 911 after the stabbing and reported that he had been hurt while protecting himself from a “pervert.” Then he left. Prosecutors say he threw away the knife, which police later found with a piece of the blade missing.

Then, prosecutors say, Day called 911 a second time, with a different story: he had cut himself while cooking.

Police arrested him at Jackson Park Hospital, where he had gone to get a cut on his finger treated.

Day’s side

After his arrest, prosecutors say, Day told investigators it was self-defense. He claimed Young called him a gay slur, made a gun gesture, and threatened to have someone beat up him and his wife.

That claim will be tested in court. The prosecutors’ account is that Young pushed Day and walked away, and that Day went after him and kept stabbing him while he lay on the ground.

Held until trial

Cook County Judge John Hock granted prosecutors’ request to keep Day in custody until trial. According to the Tribune, the judge based that decision partly on how brutal the attack was. Day is due back in court on Tuesday, October 13.

How the media covered it

Read the coverage and you might think the dead man was the villain.

Hoodline’s headline reads: “Judge Orders South Side Trans Woman Held in Fatal Stabbing of Bully.” The Tribune at least put “bully” in quotation marks. Hoodline dropped them. And the word didn’t come from a witness or a court finding. Prosecutors say it was Day’s word, about the people at McDonald’s who had mocked him earlier that day, people Young had nothing to do with.

The Tribune called Day a “transgender woman” and used “she” all the way through. Then, after laying out what prosecutors say Day did, it handed the story over to an activist. Isa Noyola of the Border Butterfly Project said the case showed how “situations like this can go from zero to 100,” and blamed “the political climate, the social climate that we’re living in that is driven by hate groups and political leadership that continues to demonize trans people.” From there the story moved on to the mayor’s Transfemicide Working Group and how many trans-identified residents Illinois has.

Here is what the story was actually about. A man walked away. Prosecutors say Day followed him across the street, fought him, and stabbed him 13 times as he lay on the ground, with a 7-year-old there to see it. The person who died was Larry Young. Not one line in the Tribune told readers anything about him.

Insults, if Young said them, are ugly. They are not a death sentence. And no “climate” put a knife in anyone’s hand.

Sources

Cover photo: Chicago Police Department booking photo of Kelly Day.

chicago
illinois
crime
united states

All news →