How we survived: The death of Howard McKinney (Pt. 1)

(This is a five-part story I wrote related to my novel, After Life, that came out in 2016. I’m reposting it here in a little series. Enjoy.)

Imprisonment to imprisonment

(Editor’s note: As the 10-year anniversary of Z-Day approaches, this series looks back on the events and little-told stories of 2010. This is part 1 of 5 in the story of Howard McKinney.)

By Juliette Mendelssohn

Howard McKinney was in his second week on the job at Chicago Heights Retirement Home March 14, 2010. Z-Day — October 22, 2010 — was McKinney’s 22nd birthday. It was also the day he died.

After graduating high school in 2006, McKinney spent more than three years in prison for his role in the shooting death of his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend. His conviction, however, was overturned when new evidence revealed that the girlfriend, Rhonda Walters, had killed the boyfriend herself and framed McKinney, according to surviving 2010 court records.

“He didn’t talk much about it,” said Bonnie Nowak, a 2010 Chicago Heights resident, “but of course we knew his story. It was all over the news. That poor boy lost his best years.”

After his release, McKinney had difficulty finding work. Though he had been fully exonerated on all charges, employers were skeptical of his character, said Jeanine Hobart, who hired him at Chicago Heights.

“He told me he had applied for more than two dozen jobs,” Hobart said. “People heard about his jail time and that was that. They just stopped listening.

“He was so happy I hired him that he hugged me for a full minute,” she added.

No relatives of McKinney could be located for this story.

When the outbreak started, McKinney had just finished of a six-hour shift. Unfortunately for him, he was also starting another, as a bug had run through the staff and three other employees had called in sick that day.

He was on a far end of the facility, bathing one of the residents, when the outbreak began. According to Robert Cornwell, in an interview conducted by the now-defunct Chicago Tribune in 2011, McKinney and the residents in that section of the facility heard screams and cries, from both outside and inside Chicago Heights’ walls.

“It was loud,” Cornwell, who died in 2014, said in the interview. “Suddenly, screams from this way and that, all around. Bad as Vietnam.”

According to surviving residents, McKinney was one of two staff members in that area of the retirement home at the time. He and co-worker Matt Nolan surveyed the scene, both through the windows and down the halls to more populated areas. Once he realized the situation, Nowak said, the two had very different reactions. Nolan fled. McKinney sprang into action.

“There were no guns in Chicago Heights,” she said, “so, after Matt ran away, Howard just barricaded the door to our wing. Didn’t think twice about saving himself, just kept working to help all of us. Put dressers and shelves in front of the door, whatever he could find. Poor boy had to do the work all on his own.”

Of the eight residents in that wing of Chicago Heights, five were wheelchair-bound, one used a walker, and the other two were so close to needing assistance that they were of little help — McKinney was the sole able-bodied person. Some of the pieces of furniture used for the barricade were hundreds of pounds, said Hobart, and when authorities came after Z-Day, it took them hours to get through the mass of a blockade, but McKinney set up the impediment on his own.

Chicago Heights had been designed to have a small kitchen area in each wing, leaving McKinney and his charges with enough food for “a few days,” according to Cornwell.

“Nine of us, that food wouldn’t last too awful long,” he told the Tribune. “He rationed best he could, think he nigh on starved himself in the process.”

McKinney made the food last eight days, but with dwindling supplies — and, Nowak added, dwindling medication, as the facility’s pharmacy was outside McKinney’s blockade — it became clear that something would have to be done.

“All eight of us agreed,” she said, her eyes filling with tears at the memory, “he was to get out and find somewhere for himself. I was the youngest of the group, and I was 71 and in a wheelchair. ‘No sense protecting us,’ we told him. But he didn’t listen. He wouldn’t leave us to die.”

(The story of Howard McKinney will be continued in a later edition.)