Ben Wilson

Benjamin Wilson Jr. (March 18, 1967 – November 21, 1984) was an American high school basketball player from Chicago, Illinois.

Born in 1967 to Ben Wilson Sr. and Mary Wilson (née Gunter), Wilson was raised in the Chatham neighborhood on Chicago's South Side.

Mary Wilson had two sons from a previous marriage, including Curtis Glenn, and would have sons Anthony and Jeffrey with the elder Wilson before the couple divorced.

Wilson began playing basketball in elementary school.

He started at St. Dorothy School and transferred to Ruggles Elementary School, graduating in 1981.

Wilson practiced at Cole Park in Chatham and participated in summer league games in Chicago.

As his game developed, friends and family surrounding Wilson began to notice that his talent could make him one of the best players in the sport.

They made it a point to protect Wilson from trouble as he got older.

As he was entering high school, the nationwide crack epidemic was in full swing and some of the people closest to Wilson, including his older brother Curtis, became addicted.

Chicago's violent crime rate was very high during this time as well, especially on the South Side.

In the fall of 1981, Wilson began his freshman year at Simeon.

During the 1982–83 season, he was the only sophomore on the varsity basketball team.

For the 1983–84 season, Simeon advanced to the Illinois AA State Championship, which was held at Assembly Hall on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

Behind Wilson, Simeon defeated West Aurora High School by nine points in the semifinals and beat top-ranked Evanston Township High School to win their first ever state title.

ESPN HS regarded Wilson as the best junior in the country for the 1983–84 season.

He played basketball with R. Kelly and Nick Anderson.

Wilson was described as "Magic Johnson with a jump shot" by his Simeon coach, Bob Hambric.

Wilson, a Neal F. Simeon Vocational High School basketball player, was regarded as the top high school player in the U.S. by scouts and coaches attending the 1984 Athletes For Better Education basketball camp.

Wilson is noted as the first Chicago athlete to receive this honor.

On November 21, 1984, Wilson died due to injuries he sustained in a shooting the day before.

In July 1984, Wilson attended the invitation-only Athletes For Better Education camp in Princeton, New Jersey.

The camp allowed scouts and coaches to watch top high school students in a single location.

After the week-long event, Wilson was ranked the number-one high school player in America.

As his senior season approached, it was believed that Wilson was considering scholarship offers from the University of Illinois, DePaul University and Indiana University.

On November 20, 1984, Wilson decided against lunching with teammates as he wanted to talk to his girlfriend, Jetun Rush, with whom he had been having significant issues.

The couple had conceived a child early in 1984, a son named Brandon, and Rush would neither speak to Wilson nor let him see his child.

Meanwhile, Calumet High School student Billy Moore was outside Simeon's campus with a .22 caliber revolver looking to avenge his cousin, who had been allegedly robbed of $10 by a Simeon student.

After finding out the conflict had been resolved, Moore and his friend Omar Dixon decided to stay nearby.

Eventually the two followed Moore's friend Erica Murphy to a nearby luncheonette located on South Vincennes Avenue, just up the street from Simeon.

Billy Moore, in the ESPN documentary about Ben Wilson, described what happened next.

He and Omar Dixon were outside the luncheonette when Wilson and Rush came up the street behind them.

Rush was trying to break away from Wilson, who in his desperation to speak to her failed to pay attention to where he was going and bumped into Moore.

Moore called to Wilson to watch where he was going, and Wilson responded by turning around and heading back toward Moore.

The two engaged in a loud argument, with an infuriated Wilson and Moore exchanging expletives.

During the argument, Moore drew the pistol he had been carrying.

Wilson taunted him and dared him to shoot; Moore later said he felt that the much larger Wilson was just "punking" him.

Wilson then lunged at Moore, who responded by firing two shots at him.

The first struck Wilson in his groin while the second struck him in his abdomen and caused significant internal bleeding.

Moore and Dixon then fled.

Within minutes, word of the shooting reached Simeon's campus, and a crowd gathered near Wilson.