There was a moment when it appeared 11-year-old Robert “Yummy” Sandifer might escape with his life.
Standing just 4-foot-6 and weighing only 68 pounds, he was an unlikely triggerman for the Black Disciples street gang and was on the run after killing his 14-year-old neighbor Shavon Dean days earlier. On this hot last night of August in 1994, Yummy spotted a police car rolling through his Roseland neighborhood and ducked out of sight.
He finally ended up at the home of a neighbor and said he wanted to reach his grandmother, one of the few people he trusted to be with him when he surrendered to police — a troubling prospect for the leaders of his Black Disciples gang, police theorized.
The neighbor left Yummy on her porch for just a moment when a fellow gang member, 14-year-old Derrick Hardaway, suddenly appeared in a gangway. In an instant, the two boys were gone. Less than an hour later, Yummy’s lifeless body was found in a viaduct several blocks away.
Yummy Sandifer’s story still resonates in Chicago 25 years after his disturbing journey from executioner to executed was splashed on television sets and magazine covers across the country as the latest example of the city’s savage gang warfare
The boy’s story — a home life that bred little but anger, a record of more than 30 arrests before reaching his teens — was a reminder of deep cracks in the system that, some argue, have never been repaired.
News reports after his death were far less charitable. “He was a crooked son of a bitch,” an exasperated grocer told Time magazine. “Always in trouble. He stood out there on the corner and strong-armed other kids. No one is sorry to see him gone.”
But few, if any, of his neighbors knew of the terrors he faced in his own household.
His autopsy offered some clues to his past: His small body “bore 49 scars,”
noted the chief medical examiner in a 1996 Tribune article. “Some likely the result of the normal falls and mishaps of youth, but others just as likely evidence of the abuse he suffered at an early age.”
Born to a mother with drug issues and a mostly absent father, as a toddler Yummy was removed from his mother’s home after he was found with multiple bruises and cord marks on his tiny body, and cigarette burns on his neck, shoulder blade and buttocks.
He spent most of his time in his grandmother’s care but was housed in juvenile facilities as he got into more legal trouble. Through it all, he maintained a poor self-image, authorities said.
“Robert is a child growing up without any encouragement and support,” an examiner at a state-run shelter wrote in a psychological report months before Yummy’s death. “He is lonely and feels poorly about himself. He has a sense of failure that has infiltrated almost every aspect of his inner self.
“He is caught up in a never-ending cycle of emotional overload and acting out,” the report continued. “His anger is so great that his perception of the world is grossly distorted and inaccurate.”
Illiterate, lonely and desperate for attention, authorities said the boy took solace as a “shorty,” the lowest ranking member of the “8-ball” faction of the Black Disciples, one of the South Side’s largest gangs. He had “BDN III,” which stood for Black Disciples Nation, tattooed on his right forearm. He was picked up for auto theft, arson, armed robbery and a slew of other crimes.
Yummy’s mother, Lorina Sandifer, was one of 14 children with dozens of arrests, while her Mississippi-born mother, Jannie Fields, was one of 27 children in her family.
“Whether they’re caught or not, they’re in this downward spiral where their lives are just f----- up from the day they were born,” said Murphy, the former public guardian. "No one’s out there to push them — it’s a very sad thing.”
Reached at her south suburban home, Sandifer’s grandmother, Jannie Fields, declined to speak with a Tribune reporter. An aunt also declined to comment, but confirmed records showing that Yummy’s mother died in 2005.
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