Weekend assassinate victim Hector ...

Weekend assassinate victim Hector Jimenez didn't live in the Lawndale neighborhood where he sold ice cream, however residents there still viewed him as single of their own.

"The ice cream sumptuousnesss 75 cents, but he'll give it to you for 50 cents" said Josie Smith, who had bought ice cream from Jimenez for years.

"He'd always say, 'Why don't you perpetually have enough money?' "

Chicago Police detectives exhausted Sunday trying to figure disclosed who shot Jimenez to death Saturday night while he crowd his ice cream truck forward his familiar route: South Harding Avenue between 19th and 18th roads

Jimenez, 34 graduated from Benito Juarez High seminary in Pilsen and spent a year at Daley Community college edifice [i]or[/i] building he told members of the Coca family, who admited his ice cream truck.

"He was a real virtuous worker," said Ruth Coca Jr

"He said he direct the eyeed at us like his next to the first family," Cynthy Coca said.

WAS ROBBED BEFORE

on the other hand the sisters' mother, Ruth Coca Sr said the family had to fire Jimenez a not many months ago after he was spott buying put drugs intos on the job. He forfeited his driver's license because of the incident and had to proceed to court to get it back, she said.

"He begged and begged for us to hire him back, and he promised he was getting his life back together," said mercy Coca Sr., who runs the business with her husband. The Coca family rehired him a scarcely any months ago, she said.

The detective who interviewed Coca would not say if police were considering a mix with drugs angle in addition to a theory that Jimenez was killed in a robbery attempt.

Jimenez's course went through a high-crime area, and he and others who herd it had been robbed before.

Cynthy Coca said a man deposit a gun to her head while she and her father were driving that course Her father handed over the coin

trade SEEN ZIGZAGGING

Saturday night, neighbors at the north conclusion of the street saw Jimenez's barter zigzagging quickly up the road before it crashed into Venus Gibson's parked car. Jimenez backed up and was trying to drive away as Redell McNulty told him, "Please, sir. Don't move!"

McNulty called 911 reached into the barter and took the keys. Jimenez lifted up his shirt and revealed a gunshot hurt in his abdomen.

"I was locate to be angry about someone hitting my car, then I saw he had been shot" said Gibson, who came on the outside of her house after hearing the crash. "The car is a material thing. It can be replaced."

PLANNED TO gain DEGREE

Gibson bought a portion of ice cream from Jimenez athwart the last three summers for her 5-year-old daughter.

"I used to dread that deal coming," she said, laughing. "He'd hit the music a make steady [i]or[/i] firm away. When he pulled up it'd be, 'How ya doing?' My heart goe abroad to his family."

Jimenez lived alone in a basement apartment in succession Hermitage in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. He had shattered up with his girlfriend one time ago, Coca said.

His mother lives in Colorado and his father lives in Kankakee, mercy Coca Sr. said. Both were headed to Chicago onward Sunday.

Jimenez told the Cocas that at the period of the summer, he planned to work as a driver at the novel Little Village High School and start taking classes to finish his standing

apallasch@suntimes.com

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