‘It could have been anybody’: Chatham neighbors flock to show support for family of slain girl

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When Tashonda Porter first heard that 7-year-old Eddimar Hernandez Chacon had been stabbed to death on a busy South Side commercial strip, she thought of her own daughters.

Porter, 45, heard that the girl had been attacked in broad daylight, holding her 17-year-old sister’s hand. Her own children are 21 and 10, she said.

“I could just imagine my daughter walking my baby down the street,” she said.

Porter brought a black Minnie Mouse headband to leave on the sidewalk on the 8600 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue because it was something her younger daughter would like. She imagined that Eddimar might have enjoyed it, too.

It had been four days since the stabbing and the foot traffic to the makeshift memorial was still coming thick and fast. Barbie dolls, stuffed toys and bunches of flowers sprawled across the sidewalk on the 8600 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue, ringed with prayer candles. Balloons bobbed up from the pile. A package of Skittles, a toy tiara, a cross and a framed photo of Eddimar sat close by the words “Eddimar, te amo” — “Eddimar, I love you” spelled out in more candy.

Every few minutes, a neighbor walked up to the pile to add a balloon or a new stuffed animal. As they placed their contributions to the pile, people spoke again and again of their shock. They talked about how the attack reminded them of their own children. They wanted to do what they could to show Eddimar’s family that they had the support of the neighborhood and the city.

Almost every person who stopped by assumed that the attack stemmed from untreated mental health issues and lamented the way mental health services had contracted around the South Side. Court records show that Shavon Gayden, the woman accused of killing Eddimar, has a decade-old pattern of apparently random attacks and threats, but don’t indicate that she suffers from a particular mental health condition.

Prosecutors said Monday that Gayden had initially tried to attack Eddimar’s 17 year old sister, who was holding her hand as they walked down the block.

In the days since, the older girl had been on Porter’s mind.

“Just imagine how that 17-year-old felt,” she said. “She’s going to have to live with the rest of this trauma for the rest of her life.”

Robert Rouse said he had been praying for Eddimar’s whole family first and foremost, but also for “the woman (who) caused this to happen.”

Rouse, 67, recalled another stunning case of apparently unprovoked violence from November 2025, when Lawrence Reed allegedly poured a bottle of gasoline onto Bethany Magee, then set her ablaze onboard a Blue Line train. Magee, then 26, survived with severe injuries. But Rouse still saw parallels.

“People aren’t able to get the help they need and this is the result,” he said.

For Shawndel Brown, Eddimar’s killing made her rethink how her family operates on the block. Brown, 54, has run a party store just up the block for 16 years, and said her son and daughter run the beauty salon next door. She has four grandchildren, ages 13, 12, 6 and 5, she said, who run back and forth between the two businesses all the time.

“We have to rethink that now,” she said. “The way that unfolded, it really could have happened to anybody.”

Brown was at her store Saturday morning when she heard screaming and running outside. She described seeing three people grab Gayden by the sandwich shop across the street and how police and emergency workers flooded the block moments later. It took a while for her to piece together what had happened.

She’d left a gift basket and a massive spherical balloon that read “baby” among the toys and flowers Monday, but it had upset her so much she went straight back home.

“It’s tormenting. It’s tragic. It’s unthinkable. So much innocence. It doesn’t make sense,” she said.

Brown wants to see more consistent law enforcement presence on the block. But she also said that “we have to think of all the resources that have been taken away from mental health” and do a better job taking care of people who might otherwise be a risk to themselves or others.

Back at the memorial, Tiger Thompson was surveying the pile and trying to get ahold of Eddimar’s family. The 55-year-old said Eddimar’s mother was an employee of his, and he’s been trying to help the family pull together funeral logistics. He said they’d come to Chicago from Venezuela a few years earlier. Brown walked over and asked if she could take his contact information. She wanted to donate a balloon arch for the girl’s funeral.

As they spoke, two men got down on the sidewalk to rearrange some of the stuffed toys. They said they came because they were from Venezuela.

The men set a few vases of flowers upright. They pushed pieces of candy back into straight lines. One of them took a lighter from his back pocket and re-lit the candles that had gone out.

Thompson leaned against the hood of his truck and cried.