Reginald Lanier worried about his safety as a security guard at a grocery in the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood, but he had lost his previous job and took this one to support his family, his brother said.
On Thursday night, Lanier was working at the Aldi store at 90th and Halsted streets when armed robbers shot him to death and injured a customer.
Two men wearing dark zip-up sweat shirts walked into the grocery store just before 7:30 p.m. Thursday, video surveillance shows. One approached a cashier while the other pulled a gun and shot Lanier, 54, in the head and upper torso after the guard confronted him, according to police.
The two gunmen fled the store with an unspecified amount of cash, police said.
According to a police source, the same suspects are believed to have robbed another Aldi, at 47th and Ashland, on Oct. 28. There were no injuries during that robbery, according to the source.
A 67-year-old customer was shot in the calf as she was gathering her groceries to leave the store. She was treated and released from the hospital Thursday night, she said.
The woman, a mother of three and grandmother of four, asked the Tribune not to identify her because no one has been charged with the crime.
She was returning from her job at an area department store when she decided to make a quick stop at the grocery store, she said.
"I was only stopping in there to get some milk for my grandbabies and just a few other odds and ends for the weekend," said the woman, who has lived with her husband in a house just a few blocks away since 1981.
She was just about to leave the store when she felt a stinging pain in her leg and realized she'd been shot. She fell to the ground without catching a glimpse of the gunmen.
"Had I been two minutes earlier, if I had put them in there a little faster, I would have been able to make my exit and not get an injury," the woman said.
She didn't know Lanier well, other than to exchange pleasantries, but she remembers seeing his body on the ground a few feet from where she fell after the shooting.
"He just seemed to be a very pleasant person -- a family person, because we talked about our families," the woman remembered.
Gerald Lanier needed work after losing a railroad security job recently, said his brother, Gerald Lanier.
"He wasn't too excited about it, but in today's economy he had to support his family," Lanier said. "He was concerned about the neighborhood and the job per se. The simple fact is that for that neighborhood, one security guard was not sufficient for a store in that area."
Darlene Frye moved a few blocks from the Aldi about six months ago. She said the shooting has made her question her security.
"I feel a little less safe. I do. This is my route," said Frye, who regularly shops at the grocery store and walks by it to catch the Halsted Street bus.
Calvin Lee is a regular customer of the store and remembers Lanier, who worked the late shift.
"I used to talk to him every time I came in the store, if I came in the evening," Lee said. "He was real nice. It's terrible to take a man's life over a couple dollars."
Gerald Lanier said he wasn't surprised to hear that his brother was remembered and well-liked by store customers.
"He was a super human being," Lanier said. "He would give the shirt off his back to a person."
Reginald Lanier had a wife and a 20-year-old daughter, with whom he liked taking bicycle rides, his brother said.
Tribune reporters Rosemary Sobol, Liam Ford and Peter Nickeas contributed to this report.
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McClatchy-Tribune News Service
