A Chicago father of three was found shot dead in a car Sunday morning, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Dwayne Triplett, 32, leaves behind his 12-year-old daughter and two sons, ages 8 and 9. The children’s mother died a little more than a year ago, the children’s grandfather told the news site.
“I was scared for him over there,” Triplett’s father, Dwayne Henley, told the Tribune. “I told him, ‘You need to get from over there. You can’t be doing that, buying rims and flashing it in front of these young boys.’”
Triplett had moved just months ago to the second-floor apartment in the Englewood neighborhood, after being given free board by a landlord who had hired him and his father to paint the building. However, Henley said that he started worrying about his son’s safety after his car windows were shattered and some items inside the car were stolen.
“He took after me,” Henley said of his son. “He had just gotten a contract on 74th and Halsted remodeling a church, fixing up the walls and building the pulpits.”
Triplett was discovered around 8:35 a.m. Sunday in the driver’s seat of a gray BMW, with a gunshot wound to the head and chest. He was declared dead at the scene.
The children were with a relative at the time of the shooting.
Police retrieved from the apartment building surveillance footage that showed a Chevrolet car and a van approach Triplett's vehicle before gunshots were fired earlier Sunday morning.
According to the Tribune, shortly after a crowd of onlookers thinned, two young men approached police saying, “I know who did it. I’ll take you there now.”
Read more at the Chicago Tribune.