Chicago shooting: Family mourning Mitchell Phillips, barbershop owner shot, killed on East 79th Street in East Chatham
A Chicago barbershop owner was shot and killed inside his business this week in East Chatham, police said.
Relatives of 52-year-old Mitchell Phillips say it happened during an attempted robbery on Tuesday.
The father and grandfather is being remembered as police search for those responsible.
Mitchell Phillips had been cutting hair in the East Chatham neighborhood for years before opening his own barbershop back in February. His business goals were left shattered in what his family says was an attempted robbery turned deadly.
"He would tell me he loved me... I wish I could tell him that again," the victim's twin brother Michael Phillips said.
Candles and flowers were laid outside a man's commitment to a neighborhood.
"If a mother came in there and school is starting up, if he could give them a free haircut, he would," said Carlotta McCottrell, the victim's partner of four years.
Inside the business is where Mitchell Phillips fought for his life during what his family says was an attempted robbery.
"I saw a lot of blood," Michael Phillips said. "Chairs flipped over. He definitely put up a fight."
Police said the 52-year-old man was shot three times inside of his barbershop Tuesday on 79th and Drexel in East Chatham.
A notice has now been plastered on the storefront, effectively shutting it down after the deadly shooting.
His family says the entrance remained locked, even during business hours, and was only allowed open for clientele.
"Somebody that he trusted with his life, they took his life," McCottrell said.
It is a shattered dream for the beloved grandfather, and is now becoming a living nightmare for his loved ones left in grief.
"I just feel empty. They took my daddy," daughter Mercedes Hudson-Phillips said.
"He would always say, 'Love you, Pops.' And I loved him when I heard that," father Charles Bondurant said. "And the fact that I'll never hear that again, it's killing me. It's killing me, man."
Phillips' family told ABC7 a witness who was inside the shop relayed to investigators that two men were behind the shooting. Police would not confirm those details, only saying that, so far, no one is in custody.
