Chicago father driving daughter to school killed while shielding her from gunfire; family searching for answers

A family is distraught and searching for answers after a father was shot to death while driving his 7-year-old daughter to school.

Travell Miller, 33, was taking his daughter Norielle to school around 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday when he was gunned down in the middle of traffic. While the father and daughter were sitting in their car in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood, they were reportedly ambushed by the gunman.

Miller was on the phone with his mother, Aquantas Gilmore, at the exact moment when he was shot to death.

"We were just having our normal conversations and then in the midst of the conversation I can tell he was startled because he was just like, 'what the,' and then that's when I heard everything," Gilmore told WMAQ-TV.

"He was simply driving his daughter to school. He was talking to his mother [on the phone] as this guy runs up on the car," Miller's father, Joseph Gilmore, told the Chicago Sun-Times.

"His mother hears her son say, 'Dang man, what the f***' She hears commotion and then hears him say, 'Mama, Mama, I've been shot,'" Gilmore said.

The 7-year-old girl cried, and pleaded for her father to stay with her, family members said.

While shielding his daughter from the gunfire, Travell was shot four times. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The shooter fled the crime scene, and has yet to be apprehended.

The medical examiner told the family that the location of Miller's gunshot wounds prove he bent over to save his daughter's life.

"She's traumatized," Gilmore said of the girl. "She's devastated that she watched her father get killed."

Miller was a single father of two girls.

Miller's twin brother, Lavell Miller, said he wasn't involved in any gang activities.

"He wasn't part of any gang life, criminal life," the brother said. "He wasn't a troubled man, didn't have any enemies. He was a brother, a father, a son. He was a partner."

"It sucks that bad things happen to good people," he said. "This is truly one of those situations."

"He was a great man, a great father, a warm loving son," his father, Joseph Gilmore, said. "I want people to know who my son is."

A GoFundMe campaign was launched to help pay for Miller's funeral.

"I want the person found," Aquantas Gilmore cried of her son's killer. "I don't want them to continue to walk the streets and be free and my child can't walk the streets and be free, ever."

"He'll have to pay for what he did one way or another," Gilmore added.

The Chicago Police Department released photos of the suspected shooter. He is believed to be between 18-20 years old, between 5'8-5'10, and has a slender build. He was driving a two-door silver Pontiac Grand Prix.

Chicago Police have asked for the public's assistance in identifying the shooter. Police have asked anyone with information on the murder to call detectives or submit a tip anonymously to cpdtip.com.

Image source: Chicago Police Department