Man Featured In CNN's 'Chicagoland' Fatally Shot On South Side

By Mae Rice in News on May 12, 2016 7:17PM

A 22-year-old man whose story was featured in CNN's 2014 docuseries Chicagoland was found fatally shot in West Pullman early Thursday morning. Police found Lee McCollum III unresponsive on the ground, shot in the head, at 12:37 a.m. this morning in the 500 block of W. 126th Street.

McCollum graduated from Roseland's Fenger Academy High School, as documented in Chicagoland. Though he started out with gang ties, he ultimately graduated as prom king, an honor roll student and an athlete, as DNAinfo noted in an in-depth piece on McCollum's life before, during and after the show. McCollum was pronounced dead at 1:22 a.m. His death comes after another shooting incident he survived in August of 2014, in which he was shot in the leg on his way to work one morning.

At the time of his death, McCollum worked at a Wendy's, his family told the Sun-Times. (In the same piece, the Sun-Times described McCollum as a man who went "from street thug to student leader," an incredibly regrettable editorial choice on their part.)

Chicagoland, an eight-part, unscripted documentary series, spotlighted McCollum and his high school, Fenger Academy. It's the same school where 16-year-old Derrion Albert was beaten to death back in 2009, allegedly for being a bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time.