The complicated, criminal, tax absorbing, Negro short life of Laquan McDonald

When Laquan McDonald was nearly 16 and locked up again in a juvenile detention center, he tried to brush aside the challenges of his complicated life.

Born to a teenage mother, shuttled among five homes in the first five years of his life, abused and neglected, the teen described why he used marijuana every day. It gave him a calmness, he explained to a court clinician tasked with the teen's evaluation, that suppressed his anger, allowing him to keep a constant "smile on my face."

While records show his father was absent from his life, the teen shrugged off the idea of abandonment. He couldn't recall the man ever having been around, he said.

"It is what it is," said McDonald, according to the summer 2013 interview. "My momma was there all the time. Don't need no daddy."

McDonald knew the gritty truth about his life and all its jagged edges. Sadly, the odds of survival were stacked against him from the time he was born until one month after his 17th birthday, when an encounter with Chicago police ended with the teen lying in a city street, his body riddled with 16 bullet wounds.

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