Personal Life and Death
He and his wife Sherialyn had three children: Sabrina, Kelley and Ricky Jr.
On July 2, 1999, while jogging near his Skokie, Illinois home with his son and daughter, ages 8 and 10, he was murdered by Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, a member of the white supremacist Creativity Movement who went on a shooting spree. Smith was a disciple of Mathew Hale (leader of Creativity Movement) and his shooting spree took place two days after Hale was denied a license to practice law in Illinois. Over a span of a few days, Smith killed a Korean American student at Indiana University, injured two African American men in Springfield Illinois, a Taiwanese man in Urbana, an African American minister in Decatur, and six Orthodox Jews in West Rogers Park. Smith also attempted to shoot, but missed 9 other potential victims. According to eyewitnesses, Smith pulled alongside the unsuspecting Byrdsong and shot him multiple times. Smith was never brought to trial because he committed suicide on July 4, 1999 after he crashed his car into a metal post during a high-speed chase in Southern Illinois. .
Read more about this topic: Ricky Byrdsong
Famous quotes containing the words personal, life and/or death:
“Denouement to denouement, he took a personal pride in the
certain, certain way he lived his own, private life,
but nevertheless, they shut off his gas; nevertheless,
the bank foreclosed; nevertheless, the landlord called;
nevertheless, the radio broke,
And twelve o’clock arrived just once too often,”
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“Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler; his body will become more harmonious, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise.”
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“I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.
So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.
For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.”
—A.C. (Algernon Charles)