Father relives trauma of son's shooting

Father relives trauma of son's shooting
The similar death of another Julian student shocks Ronald Holt
By Angela Rozas Tribune reporter
October 7, 2008
Ronald Holt was jolted from near sleep Sunday night when he heard the news. Another Julian High School student was shot on a CTA bus. Another innocent believed to be caught in the middle of someone else's beef. His thoughts, of course, went to Blair.

His son, Blair Holt, was shot on a CTA bus on May 10, 2007. The 16-year-old Julian student was shielding another teen from the spray of a gang member's bullets when he was killed.

Police charged two teens with the murder, saying Blair was killed over a dispute between two people he never met.

Ronald Holt thought of all of this Sunday night, the night Kiyanna Salter, 17, was killed near 71st Street and Cottage Grove Avenue.


"It left me . . . distraught," he said Monday. "Aside from it being [an] almost identical, worst-case-scenario as Blair's fate was that day, but thinking also of another young, promising, productive life that has been cut short. Another life that has been taken too soon. That is the damaging and damning part in all of this."

Before his son was killed, Holt, a Chicago police officer, had seen many families lose their sons and daughters to violence.
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