Mamie Thomas woke up around 5 a.m. Monday expecting a text from her longtime partner Damien Nelson, who was going to drive her to the grocery store following his shift as a security guard. When he was late, she thought he might have stopped for coffee.
Around 7 a.m., Chicago police officers rang their doorbell in Auburn Gresham to ask if she knew Nelson.
Nelson, 44, had been shot and killed early Monday outside BJ Wright Court Apartments in Little Italy, according to police and the security company that employed him.
Officers found Nelson lying outside in the 1400 block of South Morgan Street about 4:10 a.m. He suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the torso and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to police. Police said the shooter was in a dark-colored sedan.
Now Thomas and the two children she shared with Nelson are trying to make sense of his sudden death.
“It doesn’t seem real, because he was such a workaholic,” said Thomas, 42. “We are just in disbelief.”
Thomas and Nelson met at Roberto Clemente High School more than 20 years ago and had been together ever since, she said. Nelson was a doting father to their daughter in particular, Thomas said. He’d take her to museums, restaurants and to the lakefront for “quality time” and they’d been planning to go to the zoo Tuesday, she said. Later in the summer, Nelson had been looking forward to his first-ever plane trip, for a friend’s birthday in Georgia.
He had hoped to one day own his own security company and pass the firm on to his 11-year-old son, Thomas said.
“I want people that work like me, reliable (people) like me,” Thomas remembered him saying.
Besides his job as a security guard with Benford Protection Group, Nelson also worked part time at a 7-Eleven store, she said: “He didn’t want to be sitting in the house. He was like, ‘I can’t just sit. I’ve got to work.’”
Thomas “always” worried about Nelson’s safety on the job in the past — earlier this year a man tried to hit him in a car outside the apartment complex where he died, she said. But she was still stunned.
“You never think it’s going to happen to you,” Thomas said. “You never think they’re going to come to your door, that it’s going to be your loved one.”
In a statement, Benford Protection Group condemned the attack as “cowardly and reprehensible,” offering condolences to Nelson’s family and praising his work with the firm.
“Officer Nelson was a dedicated member of our team, who was loved and respected by the clients he served and the colleagues with whom he worked,” the statement read. “His dedication, bravery, service and sacrifice will not be forgotten.”
The company said it would offer grief counseling to employees, adding that they were cooperating with the police investigation. Police said no one was in custody as detectives continued their investigation.
