Noah Inman was playing basketball with his friends and family in a quiet suburban street when he abruptly fell to the ground on July 1.
Witnesses quickly called an ambulance, assuming the 13-year-old was having a seizure, but the reality was far more sinister.
Noah lived in the suburb of Hammond, Indiana, on the southeastern side of Chicago.
The teenager was struck by a bullet that fell from the sky last Saturday. He died in the city's children's hospital.
Police believe the bullet was fired into the sky from a nearby neighbourhood as part of America's Independence Day celebrations, but they're at a loss to determine which one.
"Unfortunately, this is a common action by many people who own guns in our city," the Hammond Police Department said in a statement.
"I don't know what (people who shoot their guns in the air) think happens - the bullet disappears into thin air?" local mayor Tom McDermott Jr told the Chicago Tribune.
He said the bullet could have come from anywhere close by, and the teenager's death was "a ridiculous fluke".
"It's like getting struck by lightning - so senseless. It's a horrible tragedy, and I hope the people who could've done this come forward."
Noah grew up just half an hour from Chicago, America's most dangerous city, where guns are so prominent that 1924 were shot in the last six months.
More than 350 of those were homicides.
On the surface, it's a large and sophisticated metropolis, but the reality is more Americans have died there since 2001 than in America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
Statistics show someone is shot every three hours.
Chicago is a former industrial powerhouse, but tens of thousands of people have fallen into poverty in recent years as manufacturing jobs moved offshore.
A cycle of poverty, drugs and violence that has resulted in gangs running rampant on the south and west sides to the point that some locals refer to it as "Chiraq".
It's so bad even police are too terrified to work, with arrests dropping by a third since 2014, and the number of people questioned in the streets down 80 per cent.
60 Minutes reporter Liz Hayes recently ventured into some of the city's most dangerous parts in a bid to understand how it came to this point.
She reported that officially there are 59 gangs in operation, but the reality is there are many more than that.
"Out on the streets is a palpable sense of fear and anxiety," she said.
"Just about every street block has a different gang, or smaller groups called cliques."
People can be shot over anything from a fight over a bag of potato chips to filling up a fuel tank in the wrong neighbourhood after 10pm.
Though the violence is most limited to the lowest socio-economic areas, gunshots are so endemic there's no way to guarantee safety - even in peaceful parts of the city.
"You don't actually have to leave your house to be shot?" Ms Hayes asked rapper CTC Duwop, who grew up in the midst of the gang violence.
"Nah, bullets come through walls, windows, everything," he said.
"There's been people in Chicago shot in their sleep, they've had nothing to do with nothing, they're just innocent bystanders."
Like Noah, they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He's been described as an active and happy boy from a close-knit family.
"He hustled in everything he did. If you told him to catch on a (40 degree) day, he would catch the whole game," said Noah's baseball coach, Juan Maldonado.
"If you had to bench him because there were too many kids, he would sit without complaining. There are always a few kids who are tough to coach, but Noah was one of the perfect kids."